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Liberty Under Attack
An Overview of How the War on Terror is Threatening America More Than It’s Enemies
As followers of Jesus, the leaders of Global Peace Initiative espouse a very simple religion based on James 1:27: “True religion that is undefiled before God is to take care of the widows and orphans in their distress…”
That’s it! It is pure. It is simple. It doesn’t defile anyone. It doesn’t claim geography or buildings. It never kills or has destructive fanaticism at its fringes like most other religions. It only helps, rescues and builds up. It is not based on principles….it is based on people. Jesus didn’t live and die for principles. He lived and died for people. We fight cultural, political, national and world wars for principles. But not in our religion! Not us. We refuse to be distracted from the far greater focus of God: people.
It makes our lives so simple. When we see a person in need, we don’t ask them what religion they are or what they believe. We don’t ask their politics. We don’t interrogate them to make sure they agree with our principles. If we see someone in need, their need is not diminished by the fact that they are Muslim, or Christian, or Hindu, or Jewish, or Buddhist, or rich or poor or black or white or yellow or brown or gay or straight or Republican or Democrat or Communist. A need is a need and a human is a human.
And if we find someone willing to help us take care of widows and orphans, we don’t first ask them about their religious or political leanings. We just accept their help. For us, it’s all about people. Every human being—no matter how despicable, dirty, or unlearned—is a creation of God and deserves to live in dignity. Anyone who will help us make sure all can experience that inalienable right is welcomed with open arms.
A miracle happens in the practice of this simple religion. Suddenly all of the religious and political beliefs that divide us become secondary to helping the next child. When we start looking at a helpless child or a desperate elderly woman, the differences between us become irrelevant in the face of such stark human need. We have come to believe that our religion—taking care of those who are desperately in need—is the true way of peace. It unites, while most other religions divide.
Does it seem logical that focusing on a little, homeless nine-year-old boy could bring an end to one of the most gruesome wars of the 20th Century? Yet that is exactly how the Burundi Peace Accord that stopped the intertribal warfare between the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda came into existence. The machetes and guns didn’t stop the hatred; the world’s greatest political leaders and powers couldn’t stop the war; but the heartrending story of a little nine-year-old boy living in the streets as a result of their war so gripped the heart of a nation and the ruthless leaders who had murdered so many that they immediately made peace.
From that inauspicious beginning, our simple religion seems to have spawned one of the most profound peace movements in the world’s history. Since war is the greatest creator of widows and orphans, we believe we have a responsibility to preempt their creation by doing our best to stop wars and resolve conflicts before they inflict such overwhelming and irreversible damage. A bridge destroyed in a war can be replaced—a child’s parent killed in that war can never be replaced. The greatest damage by far is the human carnage left in the wake of our wars.
We have learned that most wars are based on only a few very strong personalities. Our efforts to stop war have led us to approach these strong-willed individuals and confront them with the human carnage they are creating. In almost every instance, it has brought dramatic change. For five years in a row, from 2000 to 2004 we were able to stop or prevent a major war based on our newfound principles.
However, as the miracles surrounding our religion have become more and more pronounced, we have come under relentless attack from the Bush Administration. Even though we were originally among the strongest supporters of Bush—indeed possibly even the ones most responsible for his election—we have now become what they must consider one of their greatest threats.
It may indeed be true that the greatest threat to the power that comes from military might is peace. With the U.S. quest for power driven by the trillions of dollars being spent for military might—more than the rest of the world combined—we may indeed be presenting the greatest threat to the power that comes from that investment.
For whatever reason, the Bush Administration’s actions against us have grown so dramatic and draconian in nature that we are not only in imminent danger of losing our right to freely exercise our religion, but also our right to free association, our right to free speech, our right to a free and unimpeded press, and our right to privacy. Tragically, we have been forced by this administration into a position of defending ourselves in order to continue defending the widows and orphans of the world. This overview also includes actions that have endangered and indeed destroyed lives of widows and orphans around the world who were dependent upon our efforts.
We respectfully submit for your consideration the following examples of how far the Bush administration has gone to impede our efforts. If you agree that we—and by extension, all of America—face unprecedented actions that are eroding our freedom at an astonishing rate, we ask you to join us in electing a Congress November 7, 2006 that will take seriously their constitutional responsibility to provide appropriate checks and balances to an administration that appears inclined to otherwise abuse and destroy the freedoms that we Americans have spent two centuries building.
1) After risking his life to bring peace to Liberia, where Dr. K.A. Paul persuaded President Charles Taylor to step down to bring peace to the country, the U.S. and Nigeria jointly concocted a plan to silence Dr. Paul and claim credit for the intervention. After presiding over President Taylor’s internationally broadcast stepping down ceremony, Dr. Paul was suddenly detained by Nigerian President Olusagun Obasanjo’s security guards. Within minutes of his detention, the U.S. and Nigeria jointly claimed credit for the ending the standoff. The most crucial irony of all: just four weeks prior to Dr. Paul’s success, Condoleeza Rice, President Bush, and President Obasanjo had explicitly rejected the very process that Dr. Paul successfully pursued that resulted in peace for Liberia. Tragically, the most powerful country in Africa and the most powerful country in the world had not seen it necessary to intervene while hundreds of thousands of Liberians were being slaughtered.
2) After Dr. Paul’s successful peacemaking efforts in Burundi / Rwanda in 2000, which led to the official end of the war between the Hutus and Tutsis; and in Nigeria in 2001, where the unrest between Christians and Muslims was threatening to plunge Nigeria into a religious civil war; and in India and Pakistan in 2002, where he intervened to bring Pakistan and India back from the brink of nuclear war, two wealthy donors bought and refurbished a Boeing 747-SP for Dr. Paul and Global Peace Initiative (GPI) to use in its peacemaking and humanitarian efforts. Part of the administration’s efforts to undermine Dr. Paul included targeting the donors who bought the plane for Dr. Paul and who had donated almost $20 million to his work. They were subjected to a public investigation by the SEC, a time during which his company lost billions of dollars, only to have everything dismissed after they lost the heart and means to continue donating.
3) After successfully intervening in Haiti in 2004 at the request of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), their subsequent invitation to Dr. Paul to tell them how he persuaded rebel leader Guy Philippe to lay down his arms and end the threat of civil war was rescinded at the insistence of the U.S. State Department. The embarrassed caucus leader apologized profusely and promised Dr. Paul that he would be invited at a later date. Dr. Paul has not yet received an explanation regarding the State Department’s unusual intervention into Congressional affairs over his efforts to halt a civil war in Haiti.
4) After Syria President al-Assad personally invited Dr. Paul in late June, 2005 to hold a peace rally in Damascus, Syria, the administration initiated covert and overt attempts to stop the subsequent peace mission that Dr. Paul had organized where he, joined by India’s preeminent politicians, was to meet the heads of state in Syria, Iran, and Libya in an attempt to keep from happening precisely what is transpiring in the Middle East today. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, is the core subject of every peace rally and President al-Assad’s invitation was the first time in centuries that a Christian leader had been invited to a predominantly Muslim country to present the gospel of Jesus on such a massive scale. The administration’s intervention precluded what was very likely to have been a second invitation from Iran in July, 2005. The U.S. intervened by quickly inviting India’s Foreign Minister Natwar Singh, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s counterpart in India, to Washington to inform hi m of a rushed State Dinner for India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh—a thinly veiled effort to counter the State Dinner that (Republican) Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas was hosting for the widows, orphans and peacemakers of India—if only he would intervene to stop the peace mission. The administration hijacked and used the nonaligned status of India to assert control over what as transpiring in Syria, Libya, and Iran, nations over which it had no influence. Mr. Singh’s first order of business upon his return to India was to officially request that each country where visits with the heads of state had been confirmed not meet with Dr. Paul, India’s former Prime Minister Deve Gowda and the 25 sitting Senators from India’s Parliament, an historic delegation of peace leaders that represented all seventeen political parties in India. The U.S. seduction of India’s Foreign Minister Natwar Singh included a private meeting with President Bush—the first time in history a U.S. President had met in private with an I ndian Foreign Minister. The meeting was even more unusual considering that Mr. Singh is 1) a close personal friend of both Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro; 2) India’s most vocal opponent to the Iraq war; and 3) a proponent of a reconstituted Soviet Union to counterbalance U.S. power. He was a glaring anomaly of the typical George Bush invitee. After we informed India’s political leaders of exactly what had transpired to stop India’s peacemakers, Mr. Singh lost his cabinet position. Considering all that has transpired since the administration’s intervention to stop the peace mission designed to impact Israel’s enemies, it is quite likely that their actions have endangered Israel more than all of the terrorist threats against them combined.
5) They refused visas to India’s former Prime Minister Deve Gowda, other prominent peacemakers, and widows who were receiving GPI support as “Little Teresas”, even though they were invited by Arkansas (Republican) Governor Mike Huckabee, current Chair of the National Governor’s Association, Cincinnati Reds Owner Carl Linder, and WBA World Boxing Champion Evander Holyfield. The office that had granted visas to the 9/11 terrorists refused to grant visas to widows who had been invited by Governor Huckabee to be honored at a State Dinner in honor of the widows and orphans of India.
6) In a part of the world where child sex trade is rampant, the U.S. State Department endangered the lives of ten orphaned girls, ages 9 to 11, by granting them visas while adamantly refusing to grant visas to any caretakers to accompany them. These children could have easily been sold into child prostitution. The caretakers, who had been granted visas by all of the other countries to be visited had to deplane before the entourage left for the United States. The children were allowed to visit the United States only after some of the Senators from India’s Parliament who were also on the trip volunteered to become the children’s caretakers. (To understand the nature of the State Department’s deliberate slap, it would be similar to Ted Kennedy and Elizabeth Dole volunteering to become temporary guardians for orphans on an international trip where the children were to be honored in behalf of all of the orphans of the United States after the nation in which they were to be honored refused to allow their careta kers to come.) In an effort to build a preemptive strike against criticism for the absurdity of the State Department’s decision, Laura Bush’s top priority during the Administration’s India visit in March, 2006 was visiting children who had been rescued from child sex rings. Her efforts belied the fact that the State Department had refused to grant a visa to Mangama, one of the orphans’ caretakers who for the past ten years has been one of India’s premiere leaders in the work to rescue children from sexual slavery after she herself had been rescued from the network.
7) On July 14, 2005 the FAA wrote a letter with the intent to ground his plane after five business days so it could no longer be used for peace missions. They strategically waited until the day after Dr. Paul’s meeting with Bush’s close friends and top donors, the Carl Lindner family, before sending the letter, and then grounded it on July 18, 2005—disregarding the promised “5 business day” response time—before he had even received the letter.
8) A health crisis eventually forced the State Department to at least partially recant its asinine decision to grant visas to children but not to accompanying adults after 11 year old Shymala Pettibotla became extremely ill and was hospitalized at National Children’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. Diagnosed for the first time with juvenile diabetes, the hospital refused to release her until her parent or guardian could be trained how to give the necessary daily insulin injections and taught how to restructure her diet to avoid dangers of an insulin coma. Continued State Department intransigence was broken only after World Boxing Champion Evander Holyfield, who has volunteered his time and efforts for GPI for the past ten years and visited GPI’s children’s homes in India many times, caused an explosion of media coverage around the world by joining India’s orphans in front of the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. in a demonstration demanding a visa for Shymala’s caretaker. Meanwhile in India, widows and orphans began gathering in front of India leader Sonia Gandhi’s residence in New Delhi demanding help for Shymala. Dr. Paul and Doug Dodson rushed to India to try to assure passage to the U.S. for Shymala’s caretaker as well as the other orphans’ caretakers who had likewise been rejected earlier. The State Department dug in its heels and continued refusing visas for other caretakers. While in India, Dr. Paul and Mr. Dodson met Madam Gandhi, who called Foreign Minister Natwar Singh back to New Delhi to face their charges that he had yielded control of India’s foreign policy to Condoleeza Rice. American Doug Dodson confronted Natwar Singh for his complicity with the U.S. State Department in halting the Middle East Peace Mission. The half-hour confrontation ultimately ended with Natwar Singh refusing to show his phone logs for July 4-5, 2005, the days he made the calls to stop the mission. Shortly after the confrontation with the Foreign Minister, an individual we had never met or ever talked with filed a child custody lawsuit attempting to wrest guardianship for Shymala from Charity City. Dr. Paul and Mr. Dodson were forced to rush back to the U.S. without the caretakers for the other orphans in order to retain lawyers to defend the attempt to take India’s child. When the case came before the judge, it took him only minutes to angrily dismissed the spurious case “without prejudice,” demanding that the party never bring such a case before him again. But the obvious manipulation of our judicial system meant to be nothing more than harassment temporarily halted the story of Condoleeza Rice’s hijacking of India’s foreign policy from exploding across India, even though many of India’s top leaders had by this time learned what she and the President had done to use India’s nonaligned status to manipulate nations.
9) Not coincidentally, the first nation to need Global Peace One, the world’s largest tool to help during times of humanitarian disasters was the very nation that grounded it. Just weeks after the administration grounded the plane in their attempt to stop Dr. Paul’s peacemaking efforts, Hurricane Katrina hit with such force that it quickly became the worst natural calamity in U.S. history. More than a million Americans were left homeless, tens of thousands were stranded for days without end, and hundreds literally died in the streets awaiting help that never came. Even in such a dire situation, the administration rejected the appeal of its own former Secretary of Education Rod Paige, to release Global Peace One to evacuate people from New Orleans. Numerous personal conversations between Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta and Dr. Paul failed to budge the administration from its stance. More than 1,500 people per day could have been evacuated just with that one tool. As the administration poured money as if it were only water into the faith based initiatives they support—all with little or no accountability—it adamantly refused to use our aircraft even though it had returned from an around the world trip just six weeks earlier after passing the FAA’s required massive diagnostic “C-check” on June 18, 2005—as it turned its back on desperate Americans dying in the streets.
10) In October, 2005, the Chief of Staff for Assistant Secretary of State Karen Hughes, who had been hired to “polish the image” of the United States around the world, hung up on Doug Dodson as he appealed with the office to please reconsider what they were doing to Dr. Paul, the world’s most popular evangelist, even though he remains relatively unknown in the United States. He patiently explained that by continuing the campaign against Dr. Paul, we would alienate the few friends we have left in that part of the world. Five days later, the U.S. and India jointly suppressed news of an astonishing religious convocation at Charity City, the world’s largest children’s home founded by Dr. Paul near Hyderabad India, when the leader of the world’s one billion Hindus broke 2,500 years of tradition by personally traveling to meet with other major religious leaders in support of Dr. Paul. He and Dr. Paul and India’s most prominent Muslim and Buddhist leaders were held inside an airplane for seven hours until there were no more flights to New Delhi, thereby forcing them to miss a press conference that had been scheduled for them to issue a joint statement in support of Dr. Paul’s efforts.
11) The next day, Dr. Paul invited the religious leaders to join him in meeting Pakistan President Musharraf after an appeal for help from the Pakistani Prime Minister’s office following the catastrophic earthquake. After working through a maze of mysteriously canceled charters and other obvious efforts to keep Dr. Paul from the historic meeting (the first time an Indian had been asked to meet with and hosted by the Pakistani President), Dr. Paul’s 80-minute private meeting with the President to assess how he could help the destitute Pakistanis—suffering terribly as the world looked the other way—finally sparked Karen Hughes’ office to act. Within twelve hours of Dr. Paul’s meeting with President Musharraf, President Bush announced that he was sending a delegation to Islamabad, led by Karen Hughes. Dr. Paul and the religious delegation were able to enter Pakistan only after he stopped using his wiretapped phones to discuss his plans.
12) Three times FBI agents have boarded commercial airliners and detained Dr. Paul—usually in an attempt to keep him from appearing on a nationwide news program. He has never been given a reason why they wanted to detain him. They always hold him for several hours and then release him without explanation.
13) In August, 2006, Dr. Paul and Doug Dodson were hemmed in on a freeway near Austin, Texas. With a sneering wave, the driver of the black SUV with dark windows suddenly sped off as the Texas Highway Patrol pulled up behind us and stopped us, frisked us, and held us long enough to miss our flight. No charges were ever filed or discussed.
14) Dr. Paul is routinely detained and harassed by INS agents and held until he misses his connecting flight or his important appointments, the most recent being at the Tijuana/San Diego border crossing July 24, 2006, where he was held for seven hours. Even though he has been detained numerous times, and held for hundreds of hours, he has never been charged with a single violation of INS rules. The world’s most popular evangelist is usually locked in a cell where he sits with drug dealers and convicted criminals while they confiscate and copy everything in his briefcase and then he is released.
15) After intercepting news of our plans to deliver the book to key members of Congress by August 1, 2006 in our attempt to do everything in our power to expose what is happening and change the direction of our country, in late July, 2006 the Federal Aviation Administration subpoenaed Dr. Paul to appear before their special court in New York with tens of thousands of technical aviation records concerning the Boeing 747SP—or potentially face imprisonment. Since he was out of the country when the subpoena was delivered, he ultimately had only a five-day notice to comply. Subsequent to the grounding of Global Peace One, all of the aviation team was laid off and there was no one with the technical knowledge of what the FAA was even demanding available to deliver it to them. Aviation attorneys, shocked beyond belief, volunteered to help Dr. Paul. After seeing the FAA’s unreasonable demands, they appealed to the agency to extend the deadline to four to six months—a reasonable time considering that staff has to be hired and trained to extract the records from four different locations around the country. The FAA granted the extension—but for only 20 days instead of months. Without question, this is very obviously an effort to silence him by whatever means necessary—including incarceration. Theoretically, the FAA is an independent federal agency without political ties so that it can vigorously enforce safety rules. However, under this administration, it came under fire after disgraced Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay, now under indictment and recently resigned from Congress, used the “independent, nonpolitical” agency to track down his political enemies. Using the agency for political purposes is an ace in the hole for the administration, because it is accountable to no one.
16) The FAA has gone far beyond its parameters of ensuring aircraft safety by demanding that even our donor records be turned over to them. They have refused to document for us whether they have ever issued a similar subpoena in the past. All attorneys who have seen the subpoena say they never witnessed such a demand from the FAA and believe that donor records are completely outside FAA jurisdiction.
Complaints Against the U.S. Administration
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