But let there be no mistake about it: quick on the trigger as I may be with compassion for the innocent families, I am equally swift in my condemnation of these three guilty Scouts. And I say “guilty” because if they were not guilty they would not be dead. That is not the kind of country we live in.
Now I know there are those apologists for the Boy Scout uprising who have attempted to arouse sympathy for the three guilty Scouts by pointing out that while one had attained the rank of Eagle Scout, the other two were “only” Tenderfoots. If pressed they will concede that an Eagle Scout is a highly trained and disciplined youngster, capable of functioning as a guerrilla insurrectionist because of the various survival tactics he has had to master in order to attain his key position in the Scout infrastructure. But what of the two Tenderfoots, they ask. How could two little Tenderfoots pose so serious a threat to our national security as to make it necessary to kill them? Well, let me answer that question, my fellow Americans, by showing you the weapons that were found concealed, hanging from the belts, of these “two little Tenderfoot Scouts” when their bodies were searched by the FBI, the Secret Service, the CIA, the Military Police, the Shore Patrol, the Attorney General’s office, the Capitol Police Force, the Police Force of the District of Columbia, as well as by law enforcement officers summoned from around the country, to guarantee the probity and thoroughness of this investigation.
Now I am sure that we all still remember with a sad and mournful heart the 6.5-millimeter Italian carbine rifle purchased for $12.78 from a Chicago mail-order house by President Charisma’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, whom I mentioned earlier in connection with James Earl Ray and Charles Curtis Flood. In the mail-order catalog that rifle probably did not appear to be any more sophisticated than the weapon I am about to show you now, or any more capable of changing the course of history. And yet none of us will ever forget the impact it had upon President Charisma’s career and my own. I know that to many of you this object that I am holding in my right hand looks as innocent and harmless as that $12.78 mail-order rifle undoubtedly did in the mail-order catalog. But let there be no mistake about it, it is just as effective, if not more so.
Firstly: whereas the rifle that destroyed President Charisma’s political career measured forty inches overall, this knife that I hold here in my hand measures, with the blades sheathed, only four and five-eighths inches. This makes it an ideal weapon to use in public places, as opposed to a forty-inch rifle which might arouse suspicion on a school bus, or in a supermarket, or any of the hundred places where you and your loved ones find yourselves in the course of an ordinary day.
Secondly: it is a far more vicious weapon than an ordinary rifle and, needless to say, does not even begin to approach in humaneness a simple thousand-pound bomb, let alone a nuclear explosive. As one who was raised as a Quaker, you know, I have a particularly strong interest in being humane. That is why, since coming to office, I have done everything I can to get Congress to appropriate money for a weapons system that would make us number one in the world in that department. Surely there is no reason why a country with our scientific and technological resources cannot develop weapons with destructive powers so total and immediate as to guarantee to every man, woman and child on this planet what until now has been reserved for those few fortunate people who die in their sleep, and that is the comfort of passing unknowingly from this life into the next. Now that is the type of death people have dreamed about for themselves since time immemorial, and let it not be recorded that Trick E. Dixon lacked the moral and spiritual idealism to address himself to that dream. But now let me ask you this, my fellow Americans. What could be further from the kind of painless death for men everywhere that this administration is working so hard to bring about, than that which is experienced by the victim of a knife such as I am holding in my hand? Not only is it necessary to deliver as many as five to ten horrifyingly painful stab wounds in order to kill somebody with a weapon this small, but in order to accomplish this the murderer must exhibit a sustained viciousness, a cold-blooded determination to kill, that, I assure you, would shock and appall a combat-tried B-52 bomber pilot no less than it does you and me.
And let me tell you how they manage that sustained viciousness: Unlike our pilots in Vietnam, whose satisfaction consists solely in getting the job done as quickly and thoroughly as possible, and who have no interest at all in whatever cries and moans may happen to arise from those who do not die instantly in the blast, the people who use weapons like these are obviously sadists of the sort who enjoy watching the blood run out of their victims, and, incidentally in that connection, hearing the cries of a person in physical torment. Why else would they use a weapon that takes up to half an hour to do the sort of job our pilots accomplish in a split second, and without the groaning and the gore?
Now let’s look at the knife closely. I am going to open out the blades one by one, and describe to you the purpose and function of each. You should not be misled by its four-and-five-eighths-inch exterior into imagining that it is simply an instrument designed to kill. Like so many of the weapons carried by guerrilla revolutionaries around the world, it has multiple uses, of which murder of the agonizing and sadistic variety is but one. Let’s begin here, with the smallest of the four blades. In the language of those who employ such weapons, it is known as “the bottle opener.” I’ll tell you how it got that name in a moment. You will observe that it is hook-shaped at the end, and measures one inch and one eighth. It is employed during the interrogation of prisoners primarily to gouge out one or both of the eyes. It is also used on the soles of the feet, which are sliced open, like so, with the point of the hook. Last, but not least, it is sometimes inserted into the mouth of a prisoner who will not talk, in order to slit the flesh at the upper part of the larynx, between the vocal cords. That opening up there is called the glottis, and “bottle opener” is derived from “glottal opener,” the pet name originally attached to the blade by its most coldblooded practitioners.
This second largest blade, measuring one inch and three-quarters, tapers to a point and probably looks to you to be a miniature bayonet. Do not be fooled by appearances. It has nothing to do with bayonets such as those our brave soldiers found it necessary to fix to their rifles in selfdefense during the two-day Boy Scout uprising. This little blade is known as “the leather punch,” and far from being an instrument of self-defense, it is yet another torture device, along the lines of the bottle opener. As its name suggests, it is used to punch holes in human flesh, or “leather” as the flesh is called by revolutionaries who consider their enemies to be no more than animals. It will come as no surprise to you to learn that it is most frequently driven into the palms of the hands, much the same way that the nails were in the movie The Greatest Story Ever Told.