merriman@metronet.com (David K. Merriman) writes:

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Mike McNally says:

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John Young writes:

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. . . now comes retired Lieut. Col. James (Bo) Gritz

Mr. Gritz has been usenet flame fodder for quite some time. He's either a crypto-fascist (no, not that kind of crypto) or a saviour of the American Way, depending on your personal leanings.

The word "nut" comes to mind...

I hate to correct you, but that's "nut^3" :-)

However you may feel personally about Mr. Gritz (and his connection to Ross Perot, etc), I think he serves at least three useful purposes for other members of society who might be labelled "loose cannons", to wit: 1) When the Sierra Club was working for their particular agenda in the early seventies, many in the "mainstream" dismissed them as whackos on the extreme edge. Later, when Earth First came along and redefined what the environmental movement could become, suddenly the Sierra Club was a reasonable, legitimate voice with which those in authority could reason. Mr. Gritz, IMHO, is in part helping to redefine the "envelope" of so-called patriotism. His extreme measures may serve to help legitimize less unusual actions which are now considered "out there." 2) He serves as a lightning rod for government enforcement. It is often in the best interests of those in power not to drawn the line of acceptable/not acceptable behavior (keep 'em guessing). His actions (and those of Randy Weaver, David Koresh, etc) all drawn attention to the willingness of the government to "do something." It then becomes more possible to predict the actions of certain government agencies. 3) It keeps said agencies busy. Contrary to popular opinion, the resources of the government are not infinite (it only seems that way). The government is more like a few dozen lumbering Goliaths, each stumbling after whichever David is most irritating at the moment. Mr. Gritz serves as the decoy to lure certain giants away from other activites. Federal agents and other resources devoted to gathering intelligence on Mr. Gritz are no longer available to gather intelligence on others. [This resource allocation problem, IMHO, is one the main reasons for the FBI's insistence on the Digital Telephony Bill -- it allows a far greater degree of "intelligence" gathered per expenditure of resource.] Nutty or not, I'll be happy to cheer on Mr. Gritz.

Dave Merriman

Dan -- system@decode.com (System Operator) Cryptography, Security, Privacy BBS +1 410 730 6734 Data/FAX