Tucson: Memories and the Impact of Unspeakable Tragedies on our Hearts and Minds

My purpose in documenting this is to follow up on the many unanswered questions about the tragedy that occurred that day.

Gabby Giffords being transported from the scene of the deadly shooting in Tucson. Courtesy: workerspower.net

(TUCSON) - This week the 25th anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger disaster passed. I will never forget where I was that tragic afternoon. It is a remarkable human trait that we benchmark tragic events and remember precisely where we were and what we were doing. Who can forget where they were when JFK was murdered? Who can forget where they were when the WTC can down.

As an Arizonan, I will never forget where I was that tragic afternoon, when I heard that Gabby Giffords was murdered, fortunately that was not true, she was not dead as the early news reports claimed, but Judge Roll was murdered and so was an innocent 9 year old girl and six other innocent people that tragic day.

I first met Gabby Giffords during the 2006 campaign; she was seeking the Democrat Party nomination for Congressional District 8. I had shared a podium with her on several occasions during my dismally unsuccessful campaign for the Republican nomination for Governor of Arizona.

I was quite impressed with her, she is, smart, attractive, well spoken and most of all possessing a certain mental toughness that is rare in people. I am thankful that Congresswoman Giffords has survived, and is doing as well as possible, given a gunshot wound to the head at point blank range. Which is itself a miracle. My prayers are with her and her family for the long road of recovery. I have had first had experience caring for a loved one who has also suffered a head trauma. Gabby and her family have long road ahead of them and I wish only the very best for her and her entire family with a special thought to her husband who is has his own heartbreaking grief to endure. My thoughts and prayers are with you both.

When the first reports of that terrible shooting came in Congresswoman Giffords was reported as dead. Along with the other victims of this crime, as expected there was great confusion during the first hours after the incident. The US corporate media began making many other unsubstantiated claims about right wing extremist groups and how elected officials are now being targeted for death because the American electorate is so miserable, and now violently unhappy with the many failures of government and the perceived betrayal of the American people.

To follow that to the logical conclusion, implies that we the people are also miserable and violently unhappy with our elected officials.

Immediately the calls for more stringent and extreme gun control measures began to spew from the mouths of the usual suspects throughout the land of broadcast media. There were also calls for increased permanent powers to be added to the Patriot Act and new more intrusive surveillance methods must be mandated for the population at large, in order to be capable of identifying these “lone wolf” assassins who now roam the land looking to kill congressmen and women, who dare to defy the will of the people. Funny here we are less than 3 weeks later and it has become remarkably quiet, for now.

For those of you who are old enough to remember the old TV show, “Hill Street Blues” do you recall how every episode started in the same manner? In the squad room with the shift Sergeant reading the duty roster for the day and handing out assignments for the various duty cops for that day. I wonder what assignments were handed out that tragic morning as the police on duty for the shift began their day. There was going to be a Congresswoman and a Federal Judge out in public at a Meet and Greet for the constituents of Congressional District 8. Who had the assignment to cover that event?

The event was announced and planned in advance, not some spur of the moment get together. Where were the bomb sniffing dogs? That should have been assigned to clear the area before the event began? Did anyone sweep the area prior to the event? Were any security measures taken prior to the arrival of the Congresswoman and her staff at all? How is taxpayer money being spent for this war on terror?

My purpose in documenting this is to follow up on the many unanswered questions about the tragedy that occurred that day. What first comes to mind since both Congresswoman Giffords and Federal Judge John Roll had numerous recent death threats against them, where was the contingent of U.S. Marshalls that is supposed to provide them with a 24/7 security detail? A security detail assigned for their protection to prevent this type of crime from occurring? They both had their lives threatened, and they both were, according to standard operating procedures, to have a security detail with them for protection at all times. So, I ask, who fell down on that job??

I do not believe that the U.S. Marshall Service would ever fall down on the job, that organization is very professional and to competent to ever allow such a thing to happen, ever!! If the U.S. Marshal’s are as good as I think they are, a far more sinister question comes to mind. Judge Roll had over 200 hundred death threats in a single day. Who has the clout to order the U.S. Marshal Service to stand down and allow two high profile Federal Officials to be publicly assassinated??

Courtesy: Dave Grandlund cartoons & illustrations

I for one no longer accept the corporate media baloney about a lone crazed gunman, anymore than I believe that Arab hijackers with box cutters had the influence to get NORAD to stand down while they crashed jetliners into the WTC on 9/11. It is my opinion that this was an organized hit on Gabby Giffords and Judge John Roll, two for one. Gabby because she was such a likable, effervescent, beautiful and strong woman, who will now become the next poster child for gun control and increased social controls over law abiding American Citizens. Judge Roll was targeted because he had just ruled and thwarted the administration’s plans to seize the privately held pension and profit sharing plans of the nation, which is really the last piggy bank left to loot in the entire country.

My next question is, why did it take the Tucson Police department and the Pima County Sheriff’s office 33 minutes to get to the scene of the assassination? Two high profile Federal Officials are making a public appearance and there is not police presence within a 33 minute drive of the crime scene. I have no experience in law enforcement but that seems like both poor planning and extremely poor police protection. On a Saturday morning traffic in that part of Tucson is light, if traveling at a code 3 with lights and sirens a police car could easily average 60 mph or better in that part of town. How far away were the police assigned to cover this event; that it took 33 minutes to arrive on the scene? If you do the math that puts the Tucson Police about 30 miles away. Tucson has grown, but that is not a reasonable reaction time for an emergency call by the Tucson Police department.

Policing seems to have changed from crime prevention and arresting the bad guys to an almost insane focus on terrorism, especially domestic terrorism and surveillance of the civilian population of our own country, instead of doing the job of real crime prevention, all we hear now is terrorism and domestic terrorism. Which reminds me of that old movie where the guy ask what kind of music do you play here and the lovely young woman says we have both kinds, country and western. Well we have terrorism and domestic terrorism here in the good old USA.

What has happened to the concept of community policing where law enforcement is an integral part of the community to prevent crimes?? This was a major crime and no cops within 33 minutes. Having lived in Pima County and Tucson, I know that those departments are both first rate, and highly trained and pro-active agencies. So what happened that day? Again I ask, who has the clout to divert the Tucson and Pima County Law Enforcement Agencies away from a crime scene before it happens?

Is something starting to stink?? I smell it too. The other dead and wounded were just window dressing to cover up the assassination of two Federal Officials. The cover story is that a mad gunmen did this. Sorry I do not buy that line of thinking. That ploy has been used much too often. This has the hallmark of something much bigger, something sinister. Loughner must have been one heck of sharp shooter to have fired 32 rounds to kill 8 people and generate a total of 18 causalities ?? Pretty remarkable considering how fast it went down, considering that the crowd subdued him so rapidly.

The dead from Tombstone

Wyatt Erp and Doc Holiday didn’t do that good at the gunfight at the OK Corral. Loughner has set a new high water mark for Arizona folklore and history. If you believe that he acted alone?

If this was a professional special forces type job there would have been a four man team composed of a scout in the crowd, a spotter and another shooter from another location, and of course the man in charge to insure that everyone does their assigned task to insure the assignations are complete and the target taken out. And of course Loughner, the patsy ,to be the fall guy for an organized assignation.

He was the insurance that the real hit team gets away.

Is Loughner crazy, no doubt, but how did he get that way? Who may have assisted him in his descent into madness. When the corporate media interviewed his former girlfriend she did not describe her former boyfriend as an insane criminal, but as kind and loving young man. The same with his best friend, he was not a political guy, he was a pot head and drug user, but not political. So why did he target 2 Federal Officials who were supposed to have 24/7 protection details?? Do the math, if a protection detail consists of 3 armed men, then there should have been at least 6 U.S. Marshalls on the scene. Where were they??

Jared Loughner

What connection did Loughner have with the Armed Forces ? He was in a program to join the military but was not considered physically fit enough to make the grade. I would sure like to review the military records about Jared Laughner and what that complete file looks like not the redacted version that has been sanitized, the complete raw data file.

In the 2006 election Gabby barely squeaked into office, her opponent Randy Graf had a sound and popular position on boarder security which is a very hot topic in Arizona, for those of us who have lived here for any length of time. We can remember when going to Mexico was safe and fun. There were no drug cartels operating 40 miles south of Phoenix. You could actually go into the desert at night as many of us did to drink beer, party and meet girls, as I did during my undergraduate days in the mid 1970’s at the University of Arizona.

The game changer for Gabby was her trip to Israel and her sudden conversion to Judaism. Given that her father was Jewish this is no real surprise. The surprise was what happened to her fund raising efforts after her conversion. Thanks to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act, money started pouring into Gabby’s campaign, Jewish money and lots of it from across the country. Suddenly PAC money, and bundles from individual donors was coming in from everywhere. Money from people and groups with no apparent vested interest in Arizona Congressional District 8 were now donating maximum contributions to her campaign. Now she could afford to buy the media required to win the next race.

What Gabby did was make a deal with the devil. She sold her soul for campaign cash from organized jewery, the shadow government of the Neo-Pharisees. With full campaign coffers she won the next 2 elections, although 2010 was another squeaker for her, with a margin of less than 4000 votes, that is a nail biter for any congressional candidate who is running.

My point here is: will organized jewery, the Neo-Pharisees that comprise the unelected criminal shadow government sacrifice an asset like Congresswoman Giffords to advance their bigger agenda?? You bet they will. The criminals who took down the WTC and the Murrah Building in Oklahoma, will eagerly sacrifice a pawn to pass stricter gun control measures and dis-arm the US population. The armed US population is the biggest obstacle that still exists for the shadow government of the Neo-Pharisees to fully implement a totalitarian state here in the USA, just like they destroyed Czarist Russia and created the Soviet Union, they work day and night to impose that same hell on the citizens of the USA.

Once Congresswoman Giffords is recovered to whatever extent that may be, she will be recruited to be the walking talking advertisement for gun control, you can take that to the too big to fail bank.

Mike Harris has over thirty years experience in manufacturing, finance and technology development. He founded Harris Technical Sales Inc. that became Motorola’s vendor of choice, placing over $1.2 billion of capital equipment worldwide. As Chairman of the Board of Eclipse Technology, improvements in logistics decreased Motorola downtime by 60% and decreased mean time between failures by 90%. As Chairman and CEO of TFG Acquisition Corporation, he drove an additional $300 million of value to Motorola shareholders. Mike Harris then became the Arizona Managing Director of AMT Capital Partners LLC. In 2006 he accepted a position with Support Resources International (SRI). Within 14 months, as President/COO, SRI’s annual revenue grew from $10.4 million to $27 million, transforming a $3 million loss to a $4.5 million profit.

After four years of applied physics at the University of Arizona and two years of economics at the University of Colorado in Boulder, he received an MBA in Finance from Pepperdine University, Malibu, California. From 1995 to 2000, Mr. Harris served as a technical advisor to the Committee on Science and Technology of the U.S. Congress.