Category: Policies

Successful Fight for Mosul Shows Trump’s Failed Military Claims

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Pentagon officials said Monday that the campaign to reclaim Mosul was proceeding as planned and that so far anti-ISIS forces in Iraq are succeeding in their fight against the terror group.

The military’s upbeat assessment puts Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in an awkward position. His repeated criticism of the handling of the operation means its success could cast shadows on his argument to be the next commander in chief, while his decision to take on the Pentagon once again highlights the sacred cows he has been willing to slay during his unconventional campaign.

For weeks, Trump has lambasted the coalition effort to re-capture the city of Mosul from ISIS, calling the undertaking a “total disaster” and saying the US and its allies were “bogged-down” there even as defense officials say they are encouraged by the progress being made.

“The campaign is on track and moving forward according to plan,” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook told reporters Monday.

“There’s no question that counter-ISIL forces continue to have the momentum in this fight,” he added, using the government’s preferred acronym for the terror organization, also known as Daesh.

Yet Trump repeated his critique of the operation on Monday.

“Did we give Mosul enough advanced notice?” he asked rhetorically during a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “Whatever happened to the element of surprise?”

Trump’s view contrasts with the assessment of military officials, who have laid out the reasons why they are discussing some — though not all — elements of the Mosul operation.

And, so far, they can point for back-up to developments on the ground to take back Iraq’s second-largest city and key holdout for ISIS.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter “continues to be encouraged by what he is seeing,” Cook said, describing the campaign as proceeding on schedule.

Cook’s view was also echoed by the US special presidential envoy for the counter-ISIS coalition,Amb. Brett McGurk, while speaking Friday in Rome.

While McGurk acknowledged that the campaign for Mosul “will be a long-term effort,” he said that “every single objective has been met and we continue to move forward.”

On the same day, the military spokesman for the anti-ISIS coalition, US Air Force Col. John Dorrian, went even further.

“They were able to get to those places faster than they anticipated that they would,” he said of local forces. “So, the Iraqis continue to be successful in the engagements against Daesh.”

Because Trump has made a concentrated effort to slam the conduct of the Mosul operation, its success could undermine his claim of superior judgment as commander in chief in the final days before the November 8 election.

Non-incumbent candidates for political office always have to walk a fine line while military operations are ongoing. Typically, this involves commending the troops on fighting on the ground while simultaneously blasting the politicians in charge.

But Trump has shown a readiness to deviate from this political playbook, as he has repeatedly done for others throughout the 2016 campaign.

In contrast, then-Sen. Barack Obama made sure to praise the military even as he was highly critical of the 2007 “surge” in Iraq during the run-up to his own campaign for the presidency.

Obama called George W. Bush’s decision to deploy thousands of more troops as part of a counterinsurgency strategy aimed at reducing violence a “course that will not succeed” during an interview that year with PBS’s Charlie Rose.

Despite slamming the Bush administration, Obama still offered praise for the US troops on the ground, saying they had “performed brilliantly” and calling Gen. David Petraeus, the surge’s architect, an able and competent leader.

Trump’s recent statements on Mosul don’t include these qualifiers of praising the US military officers in charge or the US troops on the ground, though Trump has offered general praise for US troops in other situations.

“Donald Trump is testing lots of what we thought we knew about American politics, including that no one gets elected running against the troops,” said Kori Schake, a former senior Bush official, who has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016.
Schake, who was one of the 50 Republican national security officials that penned an open-letter slamming Trump earlier this year, argued that the Republican nominee’s comments on Mosul were undercutting morale.

“The particular way he’s done it is bad for morale of American forces as well as the allies bearing the brunt of the fight,” she told CNN.

Clinton has been quick to knock Trump for his criticism of the Mosul campaign.

Following his tweet labelling the assault “a disaster,” Clinton told a rally in New Hampshire last week, “He’s basically declaring defeat before the battle has even started. He’s proving to the world what it means to have an unqualified commander-in-chief. It’s not only wrong, it’s dangerous.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Chief among Trump’s criticisms has been the absence of secrecy from the fight, though most analysts believe that given its size and scope, total secrecy and surprise in an operation like Mosul would be impossible.

Pentagon officials have also noted that because the Iraqis were leading the operation, the timeline and discussion of the assault was determined by the government in Baghdad.
Military officials also pointed out that many aspects of the final attack were indeed kept under wraps.

The former dean of the Army War College, retired Army Col. Jeff McCausland, told The New York Times that the candidate’s assessment was off the mark.
“What this shows is Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about military strategy,” he said.

Trump fired back Wednesday when asked about McCausland’s remarks on ABC.
“You can tell your military expert that I’ll sit down and I’ll teach him a couple of things,” he said.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Donald Trump once actually boasted that he knew more than the generals, and later said he could “teach them a couple of things about Mosul.”  As the long fight for Mosul shows early signs of a major success, it turns out his boast was full of hot air, and his elementary understanding of complex military tactics are not better than the generals who dedicated their lives to serving our country.

Trump Says Clinton Would Triple the U.S. Population in One Week With New Immigrants

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Donald Trump made another incendiary claim at multiple campaign stops on Sunday — he declared that if his opponent Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, that she could let in more than 600 million new immigrants, claiming that she is in favor of “open borders.”

The current population in the United States is about 325 million.

“But she wants open borders,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Greeley, Colorado. “You saw that during the debate. WikiLeaks got her again. She never talked about open borders. She wants open borders. We could have 600 million people pour into our country. Think of it. Once you have open borders like that, you don’t have a country anymore.”

At his third and final stop in Albuquerque, Trump repeated the claim, although he increased the number by 50 million.

“She wants to let people just pour in,” Trump said. “You could have 650 million people pour in and we do nothing about it. Think of it. That’s what could happen. You triple the size of our country in one week.”

There is no evidence to support Trump’s claims. Clinton has said that in her first 100 days, she would present legislation for comprehensive immigration reform to Congress that would include a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the United States, currently estimated to be more than 10 million.

Trump himself has not addressed what he would do with undocumented immigrants already in the country, saying repeatedly that he would address the issue after the border is secure and all criminal undocumented immigrants were deported. Under Trump’s plan, the vast majority would be deported, since his deportation plan prioritizes immigrants accused of crimes and those that overstay their visas.

(CBS News)

Reality

When Clinton was talking about “open borders” she appears to be talking about trade and energy (though it’s a little hard to see the full context, because the excerpt is only a paragraph long): “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.”

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Donald Trump Touts Waterboarding, Stokes Immigration Fears in Border State

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Donald Trump on Sunday warned his supporters in this border state that Hillary Clinton “wants to let people just pour in,” saying without evidence that hundreds of millions of people could enter the US under a Clinton presidency.

And speaking just nine days before Election Day, the Republican nominee also bemoaned criticism of waterboarding and appeared to once again call for bringing back the since-banned technique for use in the fight against ISIS.

“These savages are chopping off heads, drowning people. This is medieval times and then we can’t do waterboarding? ‘It’s far too tough,'” Trump said, mocking critics of the technique used by the CIA in interrogations of terror suspects under President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 administration.

Trump has previously called for reinstating waterboarding and “much worse” methods of torture if he becomes president.

“We have to be tough and we have to be smart. And we have to be in some cases pretty vicious I have to tell you,” he added.

The Republican nominee also issued a dire — and baseless — warning to Americans that a Clinton administration could usher a flood of hundreds of millions of people crossing into the US.

“You could have 650 million people pour in and we’d do nothing about it. Think of it. That’s what could happen. You triple the size of our country in one week. Once you lose control of your borders you just have no country folks, you have no country,” Trump said, speaking in this Democrat-leaning border state.

Trump also stoked fears about undocumented immigrant crime, warning that continued illegal immigration would result “in the loss of American lives,” even though undocumented immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than legal US residents.

Trump’s stop here came a day before Trump stumps in Michigan, also a state likely to swing in Clinton’s favor, as the Republican nominee and his campaign are hoping to make late gains to help secure the 270 electoral votes Trump needs to secure the presidency.

Trump’s stops in these blue-leaning states also helps bolster the campaign’s message that Trump’s candidacy is on the rise and that the campaign is going on the offensive the final slog to Election Day.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Trump’s proposed reliance on tactics used by Bond villains as a practical response to the terrorist acts of the Islamic State should be leaving people feeling aghast and concerned.

Unlike fictional TV shows, like 24 where Jack Bauer runs around and tortures his way to the bad guy or movies like Zero Dark Thirty who include torture scenes that never happened which lead to the capture of Osama Bin Laden, reality is quite different.

Waterboarding, and other forms of torture, is considered a war crime according to the Geneva Conventions and is not reliable for obtaining truthful, useful intelligence.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that “the CIA’s use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.” There was no proof, according to the 6,700 page report, that information obtained through waterboarding prevented any attacks or saved any lives, or that information obtained from the detainees was not or could not have been obtained through conventional interrogation methods.”

In-fact, we’ve know for centuries that torture is not effective. Here is Napoleon’s own words on the subject:

“It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know.”

Instead, rapport-building techniques are 14 times more effective in extracting information than torture and has the upside of not being unethical.

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Trump Questions Veracity of Ballot Counting in Colorado

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Donald J. Trump has found a new reason to question the legitimacy of the 2016 election — ballots — and he wasted little time here on Saturday before taking issue with the voting system in this largely vote-by-mail state.

“I have real problems with ballots being sent,” Mr. Trump said, pantomiming a ballot collector sifting envelops and tossing some over his shoulder while counting others.

“If you don’t have a ballot, they give you another one and they void your one at home,” he told the crowd at an afternoon rally. “And then, of course, the other side would send that one in too, but, you know, we don’t do that stuff. We don’t do that stuff.”

Mr. Trump’s repetitive accusations of a “rigged” election and a slanted electoral system are grounded in the belief that fraudulent behavior would only help his opponent.

Yet it was a Trump supporter in Des Moines who was charged on Thursday with a Class D felony in Iowa, having sent in two absentee ballots, both supporting Mr. Trump.

The voter, Terri Rote, told Iowa Public Radio that she had not planned to send in two ballots, but made a “spur of the moment” decision.

“The polls are rigged,” she added, repeating a line often said by Mr. Trump.

The Polk County attorney, John P. Sarcone, told Iowa Public Radio that it was one of the very few instances of voter fraud that he had come across in his more than three decades of service. And nationally, voter fraud is rare, despite Mr. Trump’s insistence.

Nonetheless, Mr. Trump seemed undeterred in his wariness of the security of ballots, despite the same process having been in place when Cory Gardner, a Republican, defeated the incumbent Democratic senator, Mark Udall, in 2014. Mr. Trump closed his rally by encouraging his supporters to “follow their ballots” to make sure they are registered and counted.

“You can follow your ballot, make sure that ballot is registered, make sure that ballot is counted,” he said, later adding, “So follow your ballot, and if you do I, really think were gonna win Colorado and maybe win it big.”

The most recent polling out of Colorado, a Quinnipiac poll from two weeks ago, found Mrs. Clinton had a lead of eight points in the state.

(h/t New York Times)

Trump Calls African-American Neighborhoods ‘Ghettos’ With ‘So Many Horrible Problems’

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First they were “inner cities” – now they’re just “ghettos.”

Donald Trump once again appeared to equate an entire ethnicity with a socio-economic segment as he, during a campaign rally in Ohio on Thursday, pledged to “work with the African-American community” to solve the problem of the “ghettos.”

“And we’re going to work on our ghettos, are in so the, you take a look at what’s going on where you have pockets of, areas of land where you have the inner cities and you have so many things, so many problems,” Trump rambled to a mostly white audience in Toledo, appearing to catch himself using the politically tabooed word. “So many horrible, horrible problems. The violence. The death. The lack of education. No jobs.”

“Ghetto” is generally not used by public officials as it’s considered an outdated, insensitive word for struggling urban areas.

Trump has previously been rebuked for associating African-Americans – who comprise roughly 13% of the total population – with the words “inner cities.”

The Republican nominee has recently launched outreach efforts directed at black voters, but appears to have failed severely as polls have shown that less than 1% of African-American voters are going to punch in his name on the ballot.

At another point during the Toledo rally, Trump seemed to question the necessity for democracy.

“What a difference it is. I’m just thinking to myself right now – we should just cancel the election and just give it to Trump, right?” he said in front of the roughly 2,800 rally attendants, comparing his presidential bid with Hillary Clinton’s.

Trump, meanwhile, is doubling down on past remarks about the election being “rigged” – an insinuation that political experts claim could have very real and very violent consequences.

(h/t New York Daily News)

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Trump Says He’ll Teach Military Expert ‘a Couple of Things’ About Mosul

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Donald Trump went on the offensive against a military expert and former dean of the Army War College, Jeff McCausland, who said the Republican nominee’s comments this weekend about the battle to reclaim Mosul in Iraq show he doesn’t have a firm grasp of military strategy.

“You can tell your military expert that I’ll sit down and I’ll teach him a couple of things,” Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview.

On Sunday, Trump tweeted that the ongoing offensive against the ISIS stronghold of Mosul is turning out to be a “total disaster.”

“We gave them months of notice. U.S. is looking so dumb. VOTE TRUMP and WIN AGAIN!” he tweeted.

Trump doubled down on his assertion that the element of surprise is an important military strategy.

“I’ve been hearing about Mosul now for three months. ‘We’re going to attack. We’re going to attack.’ Meaning Iraq’s going to attack but with us. OK? We’re going to attack. Why do they have to talk about it?” he asked Stephanopoulos.

“Element of surprise. One of the reasons they wanted Mosul, they wanted to get ISIS leaders who they thought were, you know, in Mosul. Those people have all left. As soon as they heard they’re going to be attacked, they left,” Trump added. “The resistance is much greater now because they knew about the attack. Why can’t they win first and talk later?”

But according to The New York Times, some military experts disagree with Trump’s claims that the element of surprise is crucial to win the fight against ISIS.

“What this shows is Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about military strategy,” McCausland told the Times.

McCausland replied to Trump’s comments to Stephanopoulos in a lengthy statement today, saying, “I can’t wait to sit down with Mr. Trump and hear what he has to teach me about military strategy. I’m happy to compare my record of over 45 years working in national security affairs with his any time.

“When it comes to the question of the Mosul offensive, Mr. Trump doesn’t understand that 99.9 percent of the troops involved are Iraqi,” McCausland continued. “I reassert my statement to The New York Times: Mr. Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about military strategy.”

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton also hit Trump for his comments to Stephanopoulos yesterday at a joint campaign event with First Lady Michelle Obama in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, today.

“And yesterday when he heard a retired army colonel and former dean of the Army War College said that Donald doesn’t understand military strategy, Trump said ‘I’ll teach him a couple of things,'” she continued. “Well, actually, Donald, you’re the one who’s got a lot to learn about the military and everything else that makes America great.”

Defense Secretary Ash Carter is on the ground in Iraq and told ABC’s Martha Raddatz in an interview earlier this week that he’s “encouraged” by the progress in the fight against ISIS because it “is going according to plan … ISIL will surely be destroyed.”

Trump blamed Clinton and President Barack Obama for the need to reclaim Mosul.

“We had Mosul. We have to take it because Hillary Clinton and Obama left that big vacuum, and ISIS went in, and they took Mosul,” he said.

(h/t ABC News)

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Trump Cites Police, Military, ICE Endorsements That Didn’t Happen

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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump frequently touts his support among law enforcement and military figures.

On Monday, he told News4Jax that the United States military “conceptually” endorsed him and that “virtually every police department” in the country backed his bid for the presidency. During last week’s third debate, Trump said his hardline stance on immigration and pledge to build a border wall had earned him an endorsement from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But none of that is true.

Federal agencies are barred by law from endorsing candidates in political elections. Under the Hatch Act, only the president, vice president and high-ranking administration officials are allowed to dip their toe in partisan waters.

The Department of Defense, meanwhile, has its own set of guidelines that tightly restricts any active duty military or civilian personnel from publicly choosing political sides.

The same applies to Trump’s repeated claims about ICE, the agency tasked with deporting undocumented immigrants. Trump has doubled down during campaign rallies and onstage at debates by saying that ICE endorsed him.

But the agency has not endorsed any candidate, nor is it able to. Instead the union representing ICE employees, National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, gave the Republican nominee its backing. And it represents just a quarter of the more than 20,000 employees that work at the agency.

Trump did receive an endorsement from more than 88 retired military figures last month. His list of supporters included top military brass and Medal of Honor recipients, including Maj. Gen. Sidney Shachnow, a former Army green beret and Holocaust survivor, and Vietnam veteran Rear Admiral Charles Williams.

However, Trump’s support from military quarters pales in comparison to what some Republican predecessors received when they ran for the Oval Office.

Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee who lost in 2012, received a sweeping endorsement from 500 retired generals and admirals. The veterans banded together to release a full-page ad in the Washington Times highlighting their support.

Trump has also overstated his standing with local police departments. He has picked up endorsements from the federal police union, the Fraternal Order of Police.

But the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association in New York, the largest police union in the country with 23,000 members, has remained on the sidelines this election and has yet to back a candidate.

Police departments as a whole do not typically endorse candidates in elections. Though that has not stopped Trump from saying they do.

After a meeting with first responders and law enforcement officials in northern Florida on Monday, Trump later boasted on Twitter that he was honored for being endorsed by the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.

But the department did no such thing. The sheriff’s office took to both Facebook and Twitter to make clear that despite Trump’s comment, they have “NOT made any official endorsement.”

(h/t NBC News)

Trump Says He Wants To Cut ‘70 To 80 Percent’ of Regulations

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It can be notoriously difficult to pin down Donald Trump on the finer points of policy. But on Monday morning, the Republican presidential nominee put forth a surprisingly specific proposal: He is going to cut “70 to 80 percent” of federal regulations if he wins the White House.

Trump, lagging badly in the polls, made his anti-regulatory vow while speaking at a farmers’ roundtable in Boynton Beach, a town in the must-win state of Florida. The real estate mogul did not explain how his administration would determine which rules to axe, or how they would go about accomplishing such an unprecedented rollback through executive fiat.

“We want clean air, we want clean water,” Trump said. “But we have and you have situations and regulations, which we’re gonna cut ― we will probably cut 70 to 80 percent of the regulations, OK?”

The Republican nominee told farmers that the regulatory oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency, a favorite target of his, was simply too much to bear. The federal agency that enforces clean air and water laws has been a “total disaster,” and regulations on the whole “have been a total catastrophe,” he said.

Trump clarified, however, that he likes fresh air as much as the next person. “Look, we all believe in environment,” he said. “I mean, my primary thing with the environment ― immaculate air, beautiful clean air, and crystal clean water. That’s it. Once you go beyond that, you start to lose all of us, OK?”

Facing an increasingly narrow path through the electoral college, Trump has been banging the anti-regulation drum hard in recent days, starting with his “contract with the American voter.” In that agenda, Trump says that he will require that two regulations be repealed for every new one that goes into effect, offering no rationale for that seemingly arbitrary ratio.

A President Trump might be surprised by how difficult it would be to repeal 70 to 80 percent of federal regulations. A president could undo certain regulations that are established through executive action, and effectively weaken others by choosing not to enforce them much. But businesses mostly face regulations that have been established by Congress, through laws like the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. Congress would therefore have to undo such laws.

Trump has gone so far as to claim that the nation’s coal barons are practically starving, thanks to regulations.

“I have friends that own the mines. I mean, they can’t live,” Trump said at a Pennsylvania campaign event in August. “The restrictions environmentally are so unbelievable where inspectors come two and three times a day, and they can’t afford it any longer and they’re closing all the mines. … It’s not going to happen anymore, folks. We’re going to use our heads.”

(h/t Huffington Post)

Reality

The Code of Federal Regulations is the published list all of the general and permanent rules and regulations by the executive departments and agencies of the federal government of the United States. In it is the 50 categories that represent broad areas subject to federal regulation, which consists of a lot more than “clean air.”

Just to name a few examples of the regulatory agencies that are designed to keep you safe as a homeowner, motorist, student, employee, employer, and a consumer of fruits, vegetables, meat, drugs, alcohol, utilities, banking, and shipping include:

  • Federal Aviation Administration (FAA): regulates and promotes air transportation safety, including airports and pilot licensing.
  • Federal Trade Commission (FTC): ensures free and fair competition and protects consumers from unfair or deceptive practices.
  • Food and Drug Administration (FDA): administers federal food purity laws, drug testing and safety, and cosmetics.
  • National Labor Relations Board (NLRB): prevents or corrects unfair labor practices by either employers or unions.
  • Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): develops and enforces federal standards and regulations ensuring working conditions.

 

 

Trump Suggests Curtailing First Amendment

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During an interview with CBS Miami, Donald Trump said he’d like to change the nature of the First Amendment in order to make it easier to file libel lawsuits against the media.

Trump spoke with Jim DeFede on Sunday, and he was asked about whether he feels that “too much protection” is given to the free press. Trump affirmed his belief on this issue, stating that America should lean towards the United Kingdom’s system for libel because it gives people who sue media agencies “a good chance of winning.”

“Our press is allowed to say whatever they want and get away with it. And I think we should go to a system where if they do something wrong… I’m a big believer tremendous believer of the freedom of the press. Nobody believes it stronger than me but if they make terrible, terrible mistakes and those mistakes are made on purpose to injure people. I’m not just talking about me I’m talking anybody else then yes, I think you should have the ability to sue them.”

Under English law, defamatory statements are assumed to be false, and the burden of proof lies with the defendant to show that their statement is true. While Trump talked about this system, Trump said that the American press is never compelled to apologize, and that “they can say anything they want about you or me and there doesn’t have to be any apology.”

Trump’s relationship with the media has been complicated to say the very least. Throughout his campaign, Trump blacklisted news agencies for months, ranted about “dishonest” journalists numerous times, and has threatened to expand libel laws as president.

Recently, the litigious Trump has threatened to sue The New York Times for publishing his old tax information. He has also made similar legal threats to sue the women accusing him of sexual abuse, along with media outlets giving them coverage.

(h/t Mediaite)

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CBS Miami

Trump Pushes Fear of Non-Existent Partial Birth Abortions

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In the final presidential debate, Donald Trump said he supports the federal ban on “partial-birth” abortion because, under the procedure:

“You can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day.”

He added that this can happen “as late as one or two or three or four days prior to birth.”

(h/t NPR)

Reality

However this does not happen.

Partial birth abortions is a non-medical term the pro-life lobby National Right to Life Committee made up in the ’90s for a procedure that was outlawed in 2003 by the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, signed by President George W. Bush.

The law banned the procedure, imposing a fine and imprisonment for any physician who “knowingly performs a partial-birth abortion and thereby kills a human fetus.” The U.S. Supreme Court upheld it in 2007.

Trump’s erroneous claim garnered widespread criticism, as medical professionals and others explained that there is no such thing as an “abortion” at nine months.

Some 91 percent of abortions take place in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Only 1.3 percent of abortions happen at or after 21 weeks after conception. Of those, the vast majority happen before 24 weeks. Under the current federal ban, a dilation and extraction (D&X), or intact dilation and evacuation (D&E) — what opponents call “partial-birth” abortion — is still allowed if the life of the mother is at stake, which his guaranteed under Row vs. Wade. Still, very few providers perform it and the exact number of procedures is not known, but it’s believed to be small.

That’s because, along with the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, 19 states have their own such bans, while 43 states impose some kind of restriction on abortions later in pregnancy.

Understand that abortion is a very serious and polarizing issue to many people, but if we are to have an equally serious discussion and debate then we should be arguing the facts and realities instead of fear-based allegations, otherwise we dishonor the lives and decisions of everyone involved.

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