In a message dated 11/29/06 4:58:21 P.M. Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Here's the section of Gingrich's address that was about free speech, from his own Web site: NEWT GINGRICH: …The third thing I want to talk about very briefly is the genuine danger of terrorism in particular terrorists using weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass murder, nuclear and biological weapons. And I want to suggest to you that right now we should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren't for the scale of threats. Let me give you two examples. When the British this summer arrested people who were planning to blow up ten airliners in one day, they arrested a couple who were going to use their six month old baby in order to hide the bomb as baby milk. Now, if I come to you tonight and said that there are people on the planet who hate you, and they are 15-25 year old males who are willing to die as long as they get to kill you, I've simply described the warrior culture which is the true for 6 or 7 thousand years. But, if I come to you and say that there is a couple that hates you so much that they will kill there six month old baby in order to kill you, I am describing a level of ferocity, and a level of savagery beyond anything we have tried to handle. And, what is truly freighting [sic] about the British experience is they are arresting British citizens, born in , speaking English, who went to British schools, live in British housing, and have good jobs. This is a serious long term war, and it will enviably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country, that will lead us to learn how to close down every website that is dangerous, and it will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear of biological weapons. And, my prediction to you is that ether [sic] before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us. This is a serious problem that will lead to a serious debate about the first amendment, but I think that the national security threat of losing an American city to a nuclear weapon, or losing several million Americans to a biological attack is so real that we need to proactively, now, develop the appropriate rules of engagement. And, I further think that we should propose a Genève convention for fighting terrorism which makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction, and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous. This is a sober topic, but I think it is a topic we need a national dialogue about, and we need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait until actually we literary lose a city which could literally happen within the next decade if we are unfortunate. _http://www.newt.http://www.nehttp://www.n_ (http://www.newt.org/backpage.asp?art=3819) Excellent! Well thought out and well said. Notice Newt did not say "let me" make the new rules. He said we should all work together to agree on new rules that we can live with. But then maybe some think that losing an occasional city is worth protecting the rights of terrorists.
