The Democrat Thread

[Chet Lemon]

Yes, for a very short time. It wasn't long before all the conspiracy bulls*** went through the roof.

 

And without the political capital you speak of, Congress wouldn't have voted for Iraq. I understand that, but I also know for a fact that there were a lot of people very unhappy with Bush and that never, ever changed, 9/11 included. There's a lot of them here.

 

I maintain that Congress would have voted for Iraq without political capital b/c approximately 70% of the country favored it at that the time of the vote.

 

[Chet Lemon]

Meh, nutjobs are nutjobs. That's about 20% on either end of the political spectrum you can factor out immediately in any kind of discussion like this.

 

You mean that full page ad I read in the Chicago Tribune a while back asserting the current President was not born in the United States could be a little inaccurate?

[Rex Kickass]

That is immaterial to the question at hand. Someone tried to make the point that Obama had critics before Bush did in relative stages of their service. Its simply not true.

 

I think the Bush critics were much less rabid in my mind. You didn't see latte shortages the way you're seeing ammo shortages these days.

[Balta1701]

I think the Bush critics were much less rabid in my mind. You didn't see latte shortages the way you're seeing ammo shortages these days.

Then what was that milk price spike last year?

[Balta1701]

With each new revelation on U.S. torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gitmo (and who, knows, probably elsewhere), I am reminded of the chilling story of Alyssa Peterson, who I have written about numerous times in the past three years but now with especially sad relevance. Appalled when ordered to take part in interrogations that, no doubt, involved what we would call torture, she refused, then killed herself a few days later, in September 2003.

E&P

[BearSox]

 

 

I thought maybe this one should be posted as well, for fairness sake... I think it'd be nice if she actually answered some of the questions asked to her. It gets good at around 4:14.

[BigSqwert]

"The Democrats had long labeled the impeachment debate a distraction from the urgent business of a great nation. But the Republicans argued that the pursuit of justice is the business of a great nation. In winning this point, they caught the falling flag, producing a triumph for the rule of law, a reassertion of the belief that no man is above it, and a rebuke for an arrogance that had grown imperial," - Peggy Noonan, December 21. 1998.

 

"It’s hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, ‘Oh, much good will come of that.’ Sometimes in life you want to keep walking… Some of life has to be mysterious." - Peggy Noonan, April 19, 2009.

 

Remember also that the issue with Clinton was perjury in a civil suit. That required impeachment. But war crimes?

 

Faster, Peggy, faster.

 

LINK

[Balta1701]

LINK

I think the most bizarre part of her little discussion about the torture was the way she said it. It was just so, weird.

[Balta1701]

More coming. The ACLU's lawsuits are paying off in droves.

The Obama administration agreed late Thursday to release dozens of photographs depicting alleged abuse by U.S. personnel during the Bush administration of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

At least 44 pictures will be released by May 28 -- making public for the first time images of what the military investigated as abuse that took place at facilities other than the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

 

Defense officials would not say exactly what is contained in the photos, but said they are concerned that the release could incite a backlash in the Middle East.

 

The photos are apparently not as shocking as the photographs from the Abu Ghraib investigation that became a lasting symbol of U.S. mistakes in Iraq. But some show military service members intimidating or threatening detainees by pointing weapons at them. Military officers have been court-martialed for threatening detainees at gunpoint.

 

"This will constitute visual proof that, unlike the Bush administration's claim, the abuse was not confined to Abu Ghraib and was not aberrational," said Amrit Singh, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the agreement as part of a long-running legal battle for documents related to Bush-era anti-terror policies.

 

The photo release decision comes as President Obama is already trying to quell a drive to investigate Bush-era anti-terror practices. But now the photos and a series of other possible disclosures stemming from the ACLU lawsuit threatens to fuel the already explosive controversy.

 

Additional disclosures to be considered in the coming weeks include transcripts of detainee interrogations by the CIA, a CIA inspector general's report that has been kept mostly secret, and background materials of a Justice Department internal investigation into prisoner abuse.

 

In each instance, President Obama and his administration are being forced to decide whether to release material entirely, disclose it with redactions or follow the lead of the Bush administration and fight in court to keep the material classified.

[kapkomet]

More coming. The ACLU's lawsuits are paying off in droves.

WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO! YES! A GREAT DAY FOR AMERIKKKA! HANG THE MOTHAFUKAS!

 

And... AMERIKKKA's CHICKENS ARE COMIINNGG HHHHOMMMMMMMME TO ROOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSST.

 

This is getting ridiculous.

Edited April 24, 2009 by kapkomet

[StrangeSox]

WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO! YES! A GREAT DAY FOR AMERIKKKA! HANG THE MOTHAFUKAS!

 

And... AMERIKKKA's CHICKENS ARE COMIINNGG HHHHOMMMMMMMME TO ROOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSST.

 

This is getting ridiculous.

 

It would be much better if we just beat and abused people in secret!

[BearSox]

It would be much better if we just beat and abused people in secret!

It don't matter anymore. Because we won't be getting info from the terrorists anymore, soldiers will just shoot to kill and not take any prisoners since the only thing that can happen if they take someone in, is that they will be released.

 

What I find funny is that at the same time, Barack Obama has authorized air strikes where terrorists are known to be. Now, I have nothing wrong with that... but everyone's making a big deal about waterboarding, when the terrorists and their families are gonna get blown to hell.

 

It's okay to kill them and their family, but when you waterboard a terrorist to get vital info that may save thousands of American lives (which it has been proven to do), you've crossed the line! This is insanity.

 

If there's another terrorist attack on US Soil in the next 4 years, Obama better be impeached, because it will be on his head.

Edited April 24, 2009 by BearSox

[BigSqwert]

It don't matter anymore. Because we won't be getting info from the terrorists anymore, soldiers will just shoot to kill and not take any prisoners since the only thing that can happen if they take someone in, is that they will be released.

 

What I find funny is that at the same time, Barack Obama has authorized air strikes where terrorists are known to be. Now, I have nothing wrong with that... but everyone's making a big deal about waterboarding, when the terrorists and their families are gonna get blown to hell.

 

It's okay to kill them and their family, but when you waterboard a terrorist to get vital info that may save thousands of American lives (which it has been proven to do), you've crossed the line! This is insanity.

 

If there's another terrorist attack on US Soil in the next 4 years, Obama better be impeached, because it will be on his head.

[lostfan]

It don't matter anymore. Because we won't be getting info from the terrorists anymore, soldiers will just shoot to kill and not take any prisoners since the only thing that can happen if they take someone in, is that they will be released.

 

What I find funny is that at the same time, Barack Obama has authorized air strikes where terrorists are known to be. Now, I have nothing wrong with that... but everyone's making a big deal about waterboarding, when the terrorists and their families are gonna get blown to hell.

 

It's okay to kill them and their family, but when you waterboard a terrorist to get vital info that may save thousands of American lives (which it has been proven to do), you've crossed the line! This is insanity.

 

If there's another terrorist attack on US Soil in the next 4 years, Obama better be impeached, because it will be on his head.

I'm not sure where to start with this post. Is Michele Bachmann ghostwriting for you?

Edited April 24, 2009 by lostfan

[southsider2k5]

More coming. The ACLU's lawsuits are paying off in droves.

 

So we can release this, but not the minutes from board meetings that Obama administration officials attended at the banks we are giving trillions of dollars to? What a joke.

[kapkomet]

So we can release this, but not the minutes from board meetings that Obama administration officials attended at the banks we are giving trillions of dollars to? What a joke.

Going after Bush officials = Good for AmeriKKKa.

 

Going after Obama officials = we need to protect the interests of AmeriKKKa after Bush destroyed it.

 

 

[ChiSox_Sonix]

More coming. The ACLU's lawsuits are paying off in droves.

 

 

From the article you quoted

 

Defense officials would not say exactly what is contained in the photos, but said they are concerned that the release could incite a backlash in the Middle East

 

So why are we going to release them? I mean seriously. I understand the premise behind what this administration is doing here. I don't agree with it, but I at least can understand it. This I just don't get. Is it really worth exposing our troops to possible "backlash" just to try and prove a point?

 

 

Edit: Read too quickly. So it's the ACLU who is pushing this forward, not the Obama administration. Still, though, the article makes mention that the officers responsible were court marshalled. Isn't that the proper protocol? If the defense officials feel that this could be problematic if released, the Obama admin really needs to work to classify these documents. My opinion.

Edited April 24, 2009 by ChiSox_Sonix

[lostfan]

From the article you quoted

 

 

 

So why are we going to release them? I mean seriously. I understand the premise behind what this administration is doing here. I don't agree with it, but I at least can understand it. This I just don't get. Is it really worth exposing our troops to possible "backlash" just to try and prove a point?

 

 

Edit: Read too quickly. So it's the ACLU who is pushing this forward, not the Obama administration. Still, though, the article makes mention that the officers responsible were court marshalled. Isn't that the proper protocol? If the defense officials feel that this could be problematic if released, the Obama admin really needs to work to classify these documents. My opinion.

We've already experienced the backlash and the PR damage, it doesn't really matter at this point.

 

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that he was is concerned with the "potential backlash" in the Middle East and in the war zones. He said the release might have a negative impact on the troops.

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But Gates said with all the congressional investigations being released and lawsuits, the release of the memos was going to happen.

 

"There is a certain inevitability that much of this will eventually come out," Gates said. "Pretending that we could hold all this and keep it all a secret, even if we wanted to, I think was probably unrealistic."

Edited April 24, 2009 by lostfan

[BigSqwert]

Nice to read a sane conservative's point of view on this whole torture issue.

 

One reason one begins to despair of the MSM is its inability to report an issue like the facts of the torture program. There are plenty of facts in the ICRC report, the OLC Memos and the Senate report. One of these facts is that waterboarding is torture under US domestic law, and this question has never been legally debatable until Dick Cheney decided he wanted to do it. There is no real genuine debate about this. Just because one person decides to say black is white does not make a debate; it makes that person merely a liar or delusional.

 

And so the MSM - Dan Balz is a useful pinata for Arianna - has to create a left vs right debate. It has to refer to "left-wing bloggers" as the only torture critics, as if it is somehow left-wing to accept the unanimous consensus of every American legal authority on waterboarding: that it is definitionally torture which is definitionally a war crime. Until Bush, no conservative in America, upon hearing that a captive had been waterboarded, would have hesitated for a second to call it torture. And yet now they leap as one to say it isn't.

 

I wish Norah O'Donnell had simply asked Liz Cheney how she can possibly say with a straight face that waterboarding a human being 183 times is not torture. How? You try it in the mirror.

 

If Liz Cheney were captured by an enemy, thrown into a dark and windowless cell, strung from the ceiling by shackles, kept awake for weeks on end, thrown headlong against a plywood wall for thirty times in a row and waterboarded 183 times, would she really emerge from that ordeal and say she wasn't tortured? I mean: really? Let's get real here: she's a fraud defending a monster.

 

Is Michael Goldfarb, for that matter, really saying in public that the man he used to work for, John McCain, was not tortured in Vietnam? Is Goldfarb calling McCain a liar or an exaggerator? And yet everything that was done to McCain has been done by Bush. And his spokesman calls the torturers "American heroes." And he renames torturers "freedom-questioners".

 

These people are not making a good faith argument. They are transparent defenders of the indefensible. Arianna is right: this is a defining moment for America. This is not now and never has been a question of right versus left. It is right vs wrong. It is a bright line which the black-and-white crowd has suddenly decided is oh-so-gray. But we have their testimony now. And history has it for ever.

[lostfan]

I want to know, if people think that the release of these documents is politically motivated, how in the hell is defending the contents of them NOT politically motivated? (I don't like the public discussion of interrogation techniques which has nothing to do with politics, and I'm fully confident that the majority of people defending waterboarding etc. aren't eye-to-eye with me on this, it's all about how they feel about the Obama administration's decisions and I won't be convinced otherwise.)

[Cknolls]

Nice to read a sane conservative's point of view on this whole torture issue.

 

 

Who is the sane conservative? Sullivan? Surely you jest?

[southsider2k5]

I want to know, if people think that the release of these documents is politically motivated, how in the hell is defending the contents of them NOT politically motivated? (I don't like the public discussion of interrogation techniques which has nothing to do with politics, and I'm fully confident that the majority of people defending waterboarding etc. aren't eye-to-eye with me on this, it's all about how they feel about the Obama administration's decisions and I won't be convinced otherwise.)

 

The one thing I will agree with is that it puts the lives of troops in danger, which for me at least, isn't political.

[BigSqwert]

Who is the sane conservative? Sullivan? Surely you jest?

Just because someone doesn't spew hatred and talking points ala Rush and Hannity does not disqualify them from believing in conservative principles.

 

from wiki:

Sullivan describes himself as a libertarian conservative who has argued that the Republican Party has abandoned true conservative principles. He views true conservatism as classical libertarian conservative, where economic control of a citizen's daily life by the government is very limited. However, this style of conservatism differs from classic libertarianism in that some governmental control or regulation is acceptable in order to preserve a functional society as it currently exists. Stances on social or cultural issues, under this style of conservatism, resemble the stances of classical libertarianism or modern U.S. liberalism. While stances on foreign policy are more hawkish than classic libertarianism, this style of conservatism differs from current neo-conservatism and arguably more closely resemble U.S. liberalism from the early 1930s up until the late 1960s. In the foreign policy sphere, Sullivan's views have become somewhat less hawkish following the difficulties of the Iraq War.

Edited April 24, 2009 by BigSqwert

[lostfan]

The one thing I will agree with is that it puts the lives of troops in danger, which for me at least, isn't political.

In a roundabout way, but that cat's already out of the bag after Abu Gharib and Guantanamo. Honestly, we can't make that any worse because we already lost on that propaganda front.

 

The thing I'm concerned with is that historically, when politicians have asked for more oversight into intelligence matters, it hasn't gone well (Church Commission, etc.)

[kapkomet]

The one thing I will agree with is that it puts the lives of troops in danger, which for me at least, isn't political.

^^^^^^

 

And, you don't go around releasing stuff like this - there are some things you just leave alone - our tactics on a war is one of them. IT IS POLITICALLY MOTIVATED to release this stuff now. ACLU lawsuits or not, it's politically motivated. This stuff could be held up for years, if the administration so chose for national security purposes.

 

But, you know:

 

"war on terror" = "overseas contingency operation"

 

"terrorist act" = "manmade natural disaster"

 

"interrogation techniques" = "torture"

 

And you want to tell me that this isn't political? Which of the three don't fit with the other two?