The week that began with a White House-connected
doctor charging that Elian Gonzalez's Miami family was
"abusing" him, has ended with White House-sponsored federal
agents pointing guns at the six-year-old and his relatives while
shouting, "Gimme the f - - - - - g boy or we'll shoot you."
For those who have seen the photo of the G-man in riot gear waiving
the barrel of his machine gun just inches from the terrified boy,
there's now little doubt who the true abusers of Elian Gonzalez are:
President Clinton, Attorney General Reno and the officials who went
along with an assault plan that put Elian's life in danger; a plan that
was guaranteed to frighten him out of his wits.
Surely no qualified psychologist would suggest that Elian won't carry
the emotional scars of that moment with him for the rest of his life.
Other press accounts illustrate the brutality of the government's
tactics, which were apparently authorized by the president himself.
Donato Dalrymple, the Miami fisherman who rescued the boy five months
earlier and who had tried to hide him from the Immigration and
Naturalization Service assault force, told Reuters he believed Elian had
been physically injured in the abduction:
"It's as if they were taking a terrorist, a hostage. And they
grabbed the boy, and I said, 'Please, don't hurt the child, don't hurt
the child.' They grabbed this boy physically. They hurt him physically
and emotionally. They ripped him from my arms."
Marisleysis Gonzalez, the boy's de facto mother in America, said she
pleaded with Clinton's agents:
"Please, we'll give you the boy, don't let him see this. He's
seen enough, seeing his mother's death. We don't want this. We're not
going to do anything. We're not armed. They ran in my room, they broke
the closet door. They broke Elian's bed. They went in my mom's room.
They broke the door down."
Enraged by the outrageous attack, Ms. Gonzalez added, "Janet
Reno and everybody else, don't say you came here with no violence and
that this boy's okay. How can this boy be okay when he had a gun to his
head? "
"I thought this was a country of freedom and a country that
seeks for the benefit of a child, that wouldn't psychologically
traumatize a child. Now they've really done the harm. They have already
psychologically traumatized Elian when they put that gun (on him) and
when he saw what was going (on) in this house."
A military source familiar with the scene at Homestead Air Force
base, where Elian was taken after his abduction, told Fox News that he
was still crying hysterically and calling out Marisleysis' name as INS
agents carried him to a waiting plane.
Other accounts from inside the house reveal that Elian and Dalrymple
were far from the only members of the household who were subjected to
the Clinton administration's thug-like tactics.
An NBC cameraman told MSNBC news anchor Brian Williams that Clinton
agents kicked him in the stomach and clubbed his sound man with a rifle
butt while shouting, "Don't move or we'll shoot."
Marisleysis has said that government agents also pointed a machine
gun at Elian's five-year-old cousin.
