CNN just had James Inhofe on talking about how we could not bring the Gitmo folks to the states because they are too dangerous, and it reminded me of something that has been bothering me the last few days. There seems to be an effort to pretend that we chose to put these people in Gitmo for security reasons.
That is simply nonsense on stilts. It was little more than barbed-wire and plywood when we started detaining them there, and we had to build the damned place. We didn’t put the detainees there because it was super secure. We put them there so there would be no controlling legal authority and we could do whatever the hell we wanted with them.
I’m really tired of people making things up.
Keith
Very excellent point. And not to mention, Bush wanted to twist the knife in Castro while he was at it.
schrodinger's cat
What is even more tiresome is the MSM giving these people a platform to spout their lies from. When if ever are they going to do their job of holding our elected leaders accountable?
arguingwithsignposts
Me too. I suspect we’re going to be tired for a long time, though.
Witness MSNBC. Less than two hours after the “dueling speeches” between the most powerful person in the world and a washed-up has-been, Chuck Todd was pitching softballs to the daughter of said washed-up has-been, as if she had any kind of special knowledge about said terrorism-related issues.
Todd even said “the two most credible people on the subject” when referencing Obama v. Cheney. One of those is credible. The other, not so much.
InflatableCommenter
You are quite correct.
Of course, the Cheney retort would be that we had to put them there to get them out of the judicial process and brand them as combatants without rights. The latter tactic is the one that keeps them out of sight and out of mind, and if Cheney is telling the story, unable to carry out their evil terrorist agenda any more without fear of a court letting them loose.
This ties back to the attacks on Kerry in 2004 for suggesting that we could handle these people via the criminal justice system.
So you see, we made a mistake by handling Tim McVeigh as just another murderer. He could have busted out and blown up another building in a heartbeat. Or something.
edmund dantes
Ehhh… they are banking on the average american voters lack of any long term memory. Hell we have Newt Gingrich running around pontificating about Pelosi not being ethically right for the job of Speaker. This is the man that was reprimanded for ethic violations as Speaker by a House of Representatives on an extremely bipartisan vote.
Next thing you know the news networks will have the corpse of Jeffrey Dahmer on to comment on the latest commercial freezers and the benefits of electrical versus gas ovens.
Zifnab
I really do want to know how much money Fidel Castro gets every year to let us keep that base open. Seriously, I want to know how much of our US tax dollars go to propping up a brutal and oppressive regime. And I want to run “Republicans fund Communism” ads wall-to-wall for the next 8 years following every time some ass wipe Congresscritter pisses into a microphone about Gitmo detainees.
dj spellchecka
at this point about 40% of the elected officials in washington are republicans…i really wish the media would think about giving 60% of the airtime to the party that actually is attempting to run things….
ps: james inhofe? unless this was comedy hour, i can’t imagine that there isn’t somebody a little more credible to hand the mike to…
Old Gringo
Which is another reason we can’t just toss them into an American prison, without due process, as I mentioned on a previous thread.
We are a country putatively under the rule of law, after all.
JenJen
What is the point of having SuperMax penitentiaries if we’re not going to use them to keep captive some of the most dangerous people on the planet?
I don’t recall Timothy McVeigh escaping before his execution. I’m reasonably certain Ramzi Yousef is still a captive. I mean, WTF with this line of reasoning? I understand the “NIMBY” of it all, but good gawd politicians, grow a pair. It’s freaking ridiculous.
Incertus
Hilzoy has just been taking that argument to the cleaners over at the Washington Monthly. Restaurant quality snark.
Winston Smith
If you’re tired of people making things up, I suggest you stop watching the news.
That or get used to it…
TenguPhule
This is how Refuge in Audacity works in real life.
Lies run around the world before the Truth can get its boots on.
Old Gringo
Little known fact:
There is no law that prevents news organizations from just “making stuff up (lie to you)“.
See First Amendment.
MattF
Yeah, well. It’s possible that Inhofe doesn’t know or understand the facts about Gitmo, but it’s certain that he doesn’t care. Fling enough shit around, some of it will stick.
cleek
then following politics may not be for you.
omen
gitmo also offered the convenience of blocking press access to detainees.
it looks like mostly political gamesmanship, but is that also part of the reason republicans are fighting detainees being relocated to here? bushians lose control over press access?
NonyNony
@Zifnab:
I don’t think he or Cuba get a penny because IIRC the Cubans have been refusing the fee that the US pays for the “lease” on Guantanamo Bay since Castro came into power. The US continues to pay it (possibly into an escrow account – I’m unsure on how else they could continue to pay something that the Cuban government continues to refuse) in order to keep up the fiction that we were legitimately leased that piece of land during the Cuban-American War instead of just keeping it for ourselves as a spoil from the war.
The prison camp was specifically put there because we had a prior claim on the land and already had a Naval base there and the evil bastards in charge of our government thought they could make the case that the camp wasn’t under US jurisdiction and therefore the prisoners there had no recourse under US law. Why the fuck they thought that would fly I have no idea – if it isn’t under US jurisdiction then it would be under Cuban jurisdiction, it certainly wouldn’t be some kind of “no man’s land” as far as legal jurisdiction is concerned. If they wanted that they should have turned an old aircraft carrier into a floating prison camp and kept in international waters. That still wouldn’t have been valid, but at least it would have been murky enough to not make the argument so goddamn ridiculous.
The Naval base at Gitmo has been there for almost a century at this point.
Jill
Great point, John. As prisoners these people didn’t pose a threat to our population, just to our rule of law. Now can you just explain this to the press
Old Gringo
I believe the lease agreement is a dollar a year.
Brick Oven Bill
I have viewed television images of these Gitmo prisoners. These images showed the prisoners reading the Quran. They had certain lines highlighted and were putting their fingers of the left side of the highlighted line, and then moved their finger to the right. They kept moving their fingers across the book and were very intense.
9:5 Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush.
9:29 Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.
There are hundreds and hundreds of these. I recommend reading the whole book. There is no part about leaving what to Caesar what is Caesar’s. There is a part about not relieving yourself in still water though. This is why in Islamic areas, you will find coffee cans next to toilets.
I think Believers are misintrepreting this. Mohammed was simply telling Believers to go in the river, and not in the lake.
TenguPhule
That and fear of being sued/butchered by their victims and their families once names start getting out.
TenguPhule
Next, BOB will tell us Terri was really trying to tell us something from the videos.
Blue Neponset
I was listening to NPR at lunch LINK and Mark Halperin was claiming that the safety of towns with supermax prisons was a legitimate issue. His take on it was that Al Qeada would target these towns if any of the Gitmo prisoners were there.
Does Halperin & the other Cheney apologists think the Florence, CO Elks Club Hall is a high value Al Qeada target? This is the best thinking of our national media. It is frustrating.
b-psycho
@NonyNony: Y’know what would be funny? If, after all this “we can’t move alleged dangerous criminals from Gitmo to another prison! That’s DANGEROUS!” crap, Raul Castro simply tried seizing the land back.
Imagine the clusterfuck…
Old Gringo
Any American prison can do the same. The difference is the prisoner can sue in an American court. I keep telling you people, under our laws, there may be no way to legally continue detaining these people in an American prison.
koan0215
Wikipedia says that the US pays $4085/mo in rent for Guantanamo to the Cuban government, which does not cash the checks. FWIW.
TenguPhule
Which is why they’ve attacked Gitmo because it’s so much easier to get to since they don’t have to go through US Customs and the local government there doesn’t like us.
Too stupid to live.
Laura W
@Brick Oven Bill:
BOB, BOB, BOB.
Dunno why I love you like I do.
InflatableCommenter
@Brick Oven Bill:
Bob, I think you are mixing up this story with your hazy memories of when you worked as a lifeguard at the pool at the Nevada School for the Terminally Obtuse.
The Moar You Know
@Brick Oven Bill: Bill, you’re the best. Here’s a tip for improvement of your already wonderful spoof:
Arabic is read right-to-left, not left-to-right.
BP in MN
@TenguPhule:
I don’t know, I’m impressed that the prisoners were reading backwards as a mental challenge. Way to stay sharp in difficult circumstances, guys.
sgwhiteinfla
Uhmmm President Obama pointed that out in his speech. Unfortunately the cable chatter is too busy trying to make this into American Idol like it was a contest that either President Obama or Dick Cheney won. They weren’t even talking about the same subject. President Obama was talking about national security, Dick Cheney was trying to convince people he shouldn’t be thrown in jail.
NonyNony
@b-psycho:
Raoul Castro may be many things, but he isn’t an idiot. It’s really good for his government when the US publicly acts like a bunch of jackbooted thugs and ranting madmen. He can then point to what we’re doing and say “See folks, THIS is the stuff that we’re talking about”. The more we look like the caricature the the Cuban government has always promoted, the better it is for them. Plus anytime we make noise about human rights violations in Cuba, the Cuban government can point out that US soldiers are torturing people on the very same island. Even if we tell people we’ve stopped torturing people it won’t matter – the fact that we did it and continue to keep them without trial is enough to make the point. Gitmo has turned out to be a godsend for anti-American propagandists.
Old Gringo
@Laura W
Al Green? And Soul Train?
I think I love you – and I know why.
linda
and another slight point that seems worth making … the united states of america — that land of freedom — has the highest incarceration rate per capita on the friggin planet. if there’s anything this country knows how to do, it’s incarcerate people.
kay
I’m all thrilled and stuff because we’re going to have a trial. Imagine that. A trial. Very risky, trials. I’m not sure our ginormous lumbering beast of a federal court system can handle the pressure.
It’ll….. break! Bar the courthouse door. Scary defendant coming.
“It will never, ever work, this crazy trial idea”.
That’s the subtext of Cheney’s message, as far as I’m concerned.
JGabriel
InflatableCommenter:
Of course! What we NEED to do is take Nichols, Kaczinsky, the blind sheikh, etc. out of SuperMAX in CO; put them in Gitmo; and make Dick Cheney their warden!
After all, how else can we protect America unless we know Dick Cheney is in Gitmo, personally watching over the terrorists and the bad guys? It’s a shame that Dick will have to spend the rest of his life there, for we can entrust the job to no one else, but no cost is too great to keep America safe.
.
CT
Even by Halperin standards, the whole “terrorists will target towns that have imprisoned terrorists” makes absolutely no sense-is the attack supposed to kill the prisoners, making them martyrs, or somehow bust them out, or what? How Halperin manages to dress himself in the morning is a mystery to me.
omen
at least he didn’t say feces covered hand. is that progress?
Tsulagi
Wait, I thought Bobby Jindal said, over and over, “Americans can do anything!” Tell me he wasn’t lying.
Off topic a bit, the site ads running lately whole lot better than during the PJ days. The anti-meat ad that surely boosted steak sales, and now Pamela Anderson’s Extreme Video. Look forward to the upcoming Nailin Paylin ad.
Brick Oven Bill
Islam, as you know, is a total system that mandates the death, conversion, or subjugation of the world. This is frustrating for the New World Order types, as the Muslims operate on principle. In this manner you have to have a certain amount of respect for the Islamic faith. It isn’t for me though. I do not want an Imam in my bedroom.
Take for example this man, who blew it on his wife’s belly, and had to seek guidance from the Mufti and his protégée. The Mufti’s whole site is very good.
Old Gringo
To put it simply, “the terrists” will have access to an American court and a writ of habeas corpus if moved to an American prison and that means they will be out in a matter of months.
I really didn’t expect this to change with the Obama admin.
Call me a cynic….
TR
That’s probably because the Quran was written in the Middle East in the late 600s, and Caesar’s empire was six hundred years and 1800 miles away.
kay
@JGabriel:
If they had charged and processed the 500 or so detainess Bush released many of them may have been convicted, of one thing or another. It’s not like we don’t have ridiculously broad federal statutes on terrorism, and conspiracy. We do.
They botched even that. They didn’t retain records, they violated laws when they interrogated, they acted in a manner that would get a county prosecutor removed from office. Not because of an interest in civil liberties, but because of an interest in law enforcement. The point is to convict. It isn’t to botch it so badly you have to release.
omen
@CT:
the way this makes sense is if you assume everybody in gitmo is al qaeda. i don’t think so.
this also assumes al qaeda gives a shit. bin laden once killed a fellow high ranking member because he argued to attack israel instead of the US.
even assuming al qaeda would like to retaliate for US capturing detainees, why haven’t they hit gitmo? michael moore showed you can get close up to the shore there.
Hob
@The Moar You Know: Arabic is read right-to-left
That’s how Bill knows they were up to something!!
If you read the Quran backwards, you get heavy metal lyrics. They were secretly rocking out.
TR
Because, as we all know, Al Qaeda operatives have been running free around this country for years, but they haven’t been able to find a good enough target.
R-Jud
I just sat through Cheney’s speech and it moved me to verse:
A peony bloomed
This morning in my garden
Fuck you, Dick Cheney
Rick Taylor
Of course. And that’s the reason we want to keep them there, because it will be easier to keep there without having to produce evidence of their guilt. It’s not that they’re too dangerous to be allowed into the country, it’s that they’re too dangerous to be allowed anything like a fair trial, in which they might be released.
Old Gringo
What about an Iman?
jlo
Relevant to nothing, but the blogad boob shot of Pamela Anderson gives a whole new meaning to Baloon Juice.
jlo
Relevant to nothing, but the blogad boob shot of Pamela Anderson gives a whole new meaning to Baloon Juice.
omen
republicans can relate. they hate to pay taxes too.
Old Gringo
@kay
Thank you. They can’t be moved because they will be released. They probably should be released but the political fallout, etc. It just ain’t going to happen. Not during his first term. Wait for a quiet release during the second.
Joshua Norton
So split the difference. Don’t bring them here, bring American justice there. Since Gitmo is entirely under our control, it’s de facto American property. All Congress has to do is pass a law declaring that anyone imprisoned there is subject to the same limitations and rights as anyone detained anywhere in the United States.
Problem solved.
Yeah, right.
Brick Oven Bill
The Islamic faith extends beyond politics, religion, warfare, and sexual practices to grooming standards:
“I would like to know about removing unwanted hair from armpit and pubic hair. is it must to shave pubic hair? or can we cut hair using scissors.? because if i shave pubic hair, i will be itching.
coudl you please provide me with good answer.”
This is from Ask-ImaMMMMMMMM.org (one ‘M’).
jwb
Really, nothing is going to change until the MSM sees a clear disadvantage to putting such bozos on camera and passing off right wing talking points as pearls of wisdom. We can presume, I think, that at this point the MSM does not believe that doing what they are doing is hurting profits. I think we are stuck with the status quo until there is clear evidence that it is affecting their bottom line. (And there is always the considerable chance that they will follow the GOP rump into oblivion if they believe, as it often seems they do, that the rump is the core of “news” demographic. Here, you have to look at what the MSM does, not what its agents say or or even believe: the MSM clearly plays to the rump every bit as much, if not in exactly the same way, as does the GOP leadership.)
TenguPhule
Fixed.
Rome has been a religious rogue nation for all intents and purposes.
Calouste
Gitmo wasn’t even the most secure possible.
I mean would anyone in his right mind put high-value prisoners in a place where if they escape, they are a mile away from the regime that is the second or third most hostile to you on the whole planet and the only way to get them back is probably a full scale war?
TenguPhule
Feature, not a bug.
Remember, this is Dick and Bush we’re talking about here.
kay
@Old Gringo:
I think Holder is going to class the cases. He already has. He’s going to class them according to whether he can introduce evidence, and in what forum. We already know there are 20 who can’t be brought into any forum, whether it’s a military tribunal, some quasi-military forum, or a federal court. God knows what happened to those people, during detention.
I think they chose the first defendant according to what they can get in.
He’s appearing in federal court because they can get a conviction, with evidence that is admissable. Holder would be crazy to bring the first case on charges he believes will result in acquittal.
It’s a difficult problem. I have some sympathy for Holder. In the end, though, they are shooting for a structure and a consistent process going forward.
They’re crafting one. That’s difficult. I’m not covering for them. It’s a reality.
Seebach
I always figured these terrorists would be at the risk of other inmates. I’m sure neo-nazis and skinheads would have no issues beating, raping, and killing some of these folks in prison. I can’t believe we can’t sell it to the Wingnuts on the merits of this alone, since they are so regularly pro-rape and pro-torture.
The only way to prevent this, in fact, is to isolate them and watch them carefully. There’s no way they would be a threat to anyone.
TR
Good thing no other faith does that. Aside from Hasidic Jews and the Amish and the Mennonites. Their faiths all have prescribed grooming standards culled from their sacred texts and we all know that they’re terrorists.
Quod Erat Dumbass. Brilliant as always, BOB.
AhabTRuler
You mean Cuba? The Castros aren’t hostile to us, they want us on that wall, they need us on that wall. Our stupidly implacable hostility and our short-sighted economic embargo are one of the few things that has gone right for Cuban communism.
someguy
This is getting really frickin’ tiresome but questions like this make me think it has to be repeated:
1) Under the Geneva Conventions, we can’t put AQ on trial in the U.S. unless they’ve committed war crimes. Ordinary shooting, blowing up, stabbing, eviscerating, etc. is not a war crime. You need to be intentionally massacring civilians unrelated to the fight, or things of that nature. It mostly isn’t happening with AQ.
2) We can’t hold the detainees (or anybody else for that matter) in U.S. prisons under the 14th and 5th Amendments absent criminal convictions, per the Zadvydas case.
3) Most of them can’t be repatriated because under the Convention Against Torture, you can’t send people to a country where you have reason to believe they may be tortured.
Thus, in the absence of a third party country willing to take these prisoners, and as Judge Gates held in the Bagram cases, asylum in the U.S. is the only available solution for individuals captured in the War On Overseas Contingency Operations, or whatever we’re calling it today (WOOCOOWWCIT). It’s just one more Bush mess this WH has no good way to clean up.
TenguPhule
Ahem, never accept the labels from the Bushies.
Though labeling the Bernie Madoffs and Alberto Gonzales as child molesters in Max security prison has it’s warm glow moments.
Stefan
Mark Halperin was claiming that the safety of towns with supermax prisons was a legitimate issue. His take on it was that Al Qeada would target these towns if any of the Gitmo prisoners were there.
This is why we must evacuate New York and Washington immediately. Since we know that al Qaeda already targeted these cities and might do so again, we simply can’t run the risk of leaving our citizens there…..
Seebach
The Islamic faith extends beyond politics, religion, warfare, and sexual practices to grooming standards:
So does Judaism, you demented anti-Semite. Have you never read the Old Testament?
Trollhattan
If you want shit made up you fill find no better shit makerupper than James Inhofe. The good folks of Oklahoma surely are proud of their boy.
Calouste
@TenguPhule:
Most probably you are right.
geg6
@The Moar You Know:
Bwahahahaha! Moar, you beat me to it. BOB really is not the quality troll I thought he was.
Stefan
Under the Geneva Conventions, we can’t put AQ on trial in the U.S. unless they’ve committed war crimes.
That’s not true. If someone has committed a crime under US law, and the US has custody of that person, the US can put that person on trial. If you disagree, please provide the cite from the Conventions.
You need to be intentionally massacring civilians unrelated to the fight, or things of that nature. It mostly isn’t happening with AQ.
WTF? Al Qaeda doesn’t engage in the intentional massacre of civilians? I think the large hole I’m looking at right now in downtown NY might disagree.
JenJen
@someguy: Sorry to be “tiresome.” But German/Nazi war criminals were tried in Germany, weren’t they? And weren’t Japanese war criminals tried in Tokyo? Is it because the WWII War Crimes Trials were an international effort? I am sincerely interested and not trying to snark here.
Brick Oven Bill
The Islamic faith is far to the right of the Catholic Church on social issues. In many cases, I agree with the Islamic Faith. I just do not want them telling me how to shave, or do bedroom things, and I also do not want them to kill me. I will not be subjugated however or get a zebibah from pounding my head against the floor.
sheikh, can women go for work? If so,then under which circumstances and how?:
The primary duty of a woman is to tend to domestic related work. Apart from nurturing her children and taking care of their well being, serving her husband, father etc. a woman has no other responsibility. It is the responsibility of her father, husband, brother, etc. to support her.…
According to Shariah, it is not permissible for a woman to leave her home except in dire need and necessity. The only exclusion to work is for that woman who has no relatives to support her and she is forced to seek a livelihood that is sufficient for her to live upon.
People made the case of RICO being used against the Catholic Church. There may be a case for this. But there is a better case against Islam because of felony death threats (9:5), felony extortion (9:29), on and on, with a long history of actually making good on those threats.
The Moar You Know
@Brick Oven Bill: The mind reels.
I have not laughed so hard in a long time. Thanks, BoB.
Dennis-SGMM
You are all overlooking the many attempts to bust out Omar Abdel-Rahman from ADX, Florence, Colorado. Over the years the number of car bombs and firefights in Florence has reduced the town to a shadow of its former self.
MikeJ
Not only that, but there are any number of “ask a rabbi” websites. I don’t see why anybody sane, or even BoB, would find it unusual that followers of any particular faith would seek guidance.
If anyone needs advice from me, the answer is always, “five tons of flax!”
Brick Oven Bill
His damn finger was moving back and forth over the highlighted passage. I take back the left-right, right-left distinction.
Seebach
The only way Islam is “unique” as a religion is that it is the only religion where a large percentage of believers believe all of the crazy shit in their book of choice, unlike Christians and reform/secular Jews, who ignore 90-99% of it.
kmeyer57
This whole line of argument is such an insult to the people who operate places like SuperMax & Leavenworth. Are they saying places like that are incapable of holding a few bad guys and a bunch of random shepherds & poppy farmers?
Phoenix Woman
For those that missed it, here’s Lars Thorwald, DoJ attorney, on Obama’s speech (everything that follows is from his diary):
Key passage:
“I know that these debates lead directly to a call for a fuller accounting, perhaps through an Independent Commission.
”I have opposed the creation of such a Commission because I believe that our existing democratic institutions are strong enough to deliver accountability. The Congress can review abuses of our values, and there are ongoing inquiries by the Congress into matters like enhanced interrogation techniques. The Department of Justice and our courts can work through and punish any violations of our laws.”
That passage packs a significant amount of punch. A significant amount.
That statement, that language quoted above, was reviewed and approved by more than Obama and Rahm and Jon Favreau. You can rest assured that the language of that speech was vetted within the White House and by the Attorney General, by State and DOD, CIA and NSA. Presidents do not give a speech of such importance without serious review of what will be said. Okay, maybe the last one didn’t. But I assure you this one does.
So it has meaning, and, I would contend, real meaning.
omen
@Phoenix Woman:
they can. the question is if they will.
kay
It’s amusing watching the press hammering Gibbs on what, exactly, he plans to do with the detainees. They’re a little whiny.
The same detainees who have been sitting in Cuba for 7 years. SEVEN YEARS, while the White House press corps sat on their hands.
All of a sudden, we’re in a big freaking hurry.
geg6
@Brick Oven Bill:
And this is different from Catholic teaching about every sperm being sacred, how?
chopper
i dunno. from what i hear KSM is an 8-foot-tall 500 lb mountain of a man who can palm a medicine ball and snap a guard’s neck with one hand. he’s also as cunning as lex luthor. he’ll escape a supermax prison in a jiffy.
oh wait, he’s a 50-year-old fat guy who’s been waterboarded so many times his brain has turned into puddin. sorry, i (and apparently the entire republican party) have been watching way too much TV recently.
seriously, these aren’t the goddamn x-men we’re talking about. christ.
chopper
“I agree with the Islamic Faith” – Brick Oven Bill
at last, the truth comes out.
steve
Doesn’t Cheney realize that he was in office for 9 months when the terror attacks came and that he had a warning that he ignored. he then took the country,including Democrats who were afraid to challenege him, into a war with the wrong enemy and destabilized the middle east.
Seebach
But if they aren’t, that means Americans have been cowards and Republicans scam artists.
geg6
@Brick Oven Bill:
Again, BOB, I am compelled to ask. This is different from the Catholic Church, how?
The Moar You Know
@Brick Oven Bill: My, so touchy. I’ll remember that you are extra-sensitive about mistakes that you make and will try to be more considerate of your special needs in the future.
sgwhiteinfla
@Phoenix Woman:
You must not have seen Rachel Maddow last night.
mcc
John, now don’t be silly. The security at Gitmo flowed not from the facility itself, but from that even if detainees were to escape the site they would find themselves running right into the arms of the America-friendly regime in Cuba.
omen
@sgwhiteinfla:
what was said on rachel?
sgwhiteinfla
@omen:
She had on Isikoff of Newsweek who reported on a secret “off the record” meeting Obama had with Civil Libertarians. According to Isikoff President Obama made it clear that DOJ wouldn’t be prosecuting Bush Co and evidently Atty General Holder was in the room. Now I don’t think this has been confirmed yet and it is kind of slimy if this really was an “off the record” meeting if someone leaked however it IS what Isikoff said he was told.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#30856294
TenguPhule
If by far right, you mean arm in arm.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
@geg6: You need to supply the proper link with this comment. You know the one I mean!
TenguPhule
-Catholic Church
Except for the whole “Punishing themselves for being slutty sinners descended from Eve” shit.
Old Gringo
@jenjen
It’s because they, the Germans and the Japanese, lost. Had they won, Old IronAss (General “Bombs Away” LeMay) would have been tried as a war criminal and he admitted as much after the war. To the victor go the spoils, and the apparently right to prosecute war crimes….
omen
@Seebach:
The only way Islam is “unique” as a religion is that it is the only religion where a large percentage of believers believe all of the crazy shit in their book of choice, unlike Christians and reform/secular Jews, who ignore 90-99% of it.
there is a lot of misconceptions. if i didn’t read juan cole, and if took my lead from corporate media’s depiction of the country, i’d assume pakistan is filled with nothing but militant fundamentalists. it’s not.
Brick Oven Bill
geg6; According to This Apostate, who seems to be credible, there are daily killings in the name of Islam He counts for the month of April as follows:
A. Jihad Attacks: 158
B. Dead Bodies: 715
C. Critically Injured: 1138
If the Catholic Church is trying to spread their belief system through the threat of force, they suck at it. I do not belief that they even critically injured a single person in April, although I could be wrong. The Islamic threat of violence is thus more credible than the Catholic threat of force, and more susceptible to RICO prosecution.
Roger Moore
@Zifnab:
Nothing. The rent is $4,085, but the Cuban government refuses to cash the check as a protest against Yankee Imperialism. The Cuban government has also systematically prevented the US base from buying any supplies from Cuba as a way of making it harder to operate. The net result is that they get nothing from us.
Seebach
That is true. But there do seem to be a lot more militant fundamentalists than Christians voluntarily living in dire poverty among the homeless, washing feet for subsistence bread crust.
TenguPhule
They also like their victims young and small.
Less chance of it being reported. Plus, who listens to kids these days anyway.
gizmo
It’s all about the fear.
JenJen
@Old Gringo: Well, right, but I’m more interested in why they were tried in their own countries rather than in, say, New York, London, Paris or Moscow.
I’m not buying the argument above that trying suspected AQ in the US would be in violation of Geneva… especially considering that AQ aren’t representing nation-states. It’s a very confusing issue and I really am interested in getting to the bottom of it.
Indylib
@sgwhiteinfla:
I’m not saying this isn’t true, but until somebody has the balls to make this claim when they are not protected by anonymity, I’m viewing it with skepticism.
The whole spiel that Isikoff rattled off did not sound a whole lot like Obama, unless Obama is a hardass behind closed doors, which seems unlikely. I’m taking this one with a big grain of salt until someone is willing to publically stand behind this take on what happened in the meeting.
Calouste
@sgwhiteinfla:
A few questions arise:
1) Who/What TF are “Civil Libertarians”?
2) What is their influence?
3) Why would Obama hold “off the record” meetings with them?
4) Who were in that room representing them?
5) What is in it for Obama to make such an extragavant promise to them?
At moment this looks to me like my toilet after I have had a particulary nasty curry.
Michael
Christianist translator: “We got our converts by force and were there first already – don’t poach our turf.”
All religions are reprehensible and do nothing of value for the human condition.
sgwhiteinfla
Indylib
Seen as how it wasn’t supposed to get out to begin with somehow I doubt you will ever get your confirmation. But I will say that we have some proof that Obama can be a hard ass behind closed doors. Just ask the creditors for Chrysler.
omen
@sgwhiteinfla:
She had on Isikoff of Newsweek who reported on a secret “off the record” meeting Obama had with Civil Libertarians.
always useful to do a search on media matters if you’re unsure about a reporter’s integrity.
MikeJ
Discordians, Subgenii, Pastafarians are all entertaining.
Phoenix Woman
Oh, yes, and Jesselyn Radack — who is not an Obamabot — agrees with Lars’ take:
—————–
I agree with your analysis, Lars (1+ / 0-)
(which I realize may not be your real name). Thanks for the mention. Is there any way to edit your diary to say “Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project”?
I know you e-mailed me off-Kos at my personal e-mail, but could you do so again at [email protected]. I would love to chat further, and thank you for writing these diaries from the inside.
by Jesselyn Radack on Thu May 21, 2009 at 12:13:56 PM PDT
InflatableCommenter
@geg6:
Come on you guys, he was watching it in a mirror.
BOB would never make a mistake like that.
He’s a walking encyclopedia for crissakes.
Drew
As John Stewart so succinctly put it, “I’d put a good old fashioned American brain eater against any of these terrorist motherfuckers anyday.”
The video can be seen here,
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_01/016662.php
Drew
Sean Galbraith
Camp X-Ray, the original Gitmo prison, as it currently sits abandoned:
http://www.seangalbraith.com/new/camp-xray-guantanamo-bay.htm
NonWonderDog
@omen:
I took a modern Middle Eastern history a class with Juan Cole a couple years ago, and he once told a story about a trip he took to Uzbekistan. After their little academic dinner, they went back to one of the guys’ houses to party in the traditional Uzbek fasion: an entire garbage bag full of handles of vodka. The Islamic prohibition against alcohol is apparently a dead letter there amongst all but the most devout.
Cole also told us the story of when he met the guy in charge of flying the Brazilian hookers in for the Saudi royal family. Good times.
sgwhiteinfla
Calouste
While not vouching for the voracity of Isikoff’s statements I will answer a few of your questions.
1. Groups like the ACLU or Human Rights Watch or Glenn Greenwald for instance.
2. I don’t know.
3 Because they had been beating him over the head lately because of some of the moves he has been making wrt detainees, most recently blocking the Abu Ghraib pics from coming out.
4. No idea.
5. I don’t know what promise you are talking about but civil libertarian groups were major backers of President Obama last year during the general election.
Tax Analyst
Aha, but when you read it left-to-right it’s kinda like “backward masking”, you know, where you play recorded music backwards and it tells you to go “Kill The Pigs”, or “Invest with Bernie Madoff”, or something else that considerably fucks up your life for a long time.
I think the masked message is “The Walrus is Paul, and if you are reading this from a prison or a detention camp you are seriously screwed”.
InflatableCommenter
@Calouste:
People eating lunch everywhere will have a fond memory of you today.
Nice work.
( rolls eyes )
LITBMueller
Unless the Gitmo guys have Jedi powers, there is simply no way they are more dangerous than a hardcore MS-13 member. No. Way.
And what is this shit about them running around the streets of ‘Murica? If they happen to win their criminal trials, they can be deported. Sionara, Mr. Terrorist.
Zifnab
@Roger Moore: :-p Well, bully for them.
Zifnab
@Brick Oven Bill:
Yeah, just like a pansy little liberal to treat terrorism as a law enforcement issue. We all know you can’t arrest a terrorist. Where are you going to lock him up? He’ll just get out and be that much closer to America! The only solution is to Nuke Iran(tm) and all the Presidents up to this point have been too liberal and weak to do it.
omen
@Drew:
rofl!
you mean the rest of the world thinks we’re all cannibals? what did they make of jeffrey dahmer, wonder.
Indylib
@sgwhiteinfla:
I’ll give you that one, but I don’t think the group of creditors for Chrysler were acting in good faith. I would be more inclined to believe the groups in that meeting were, and that Obama was unlikely to be as dismissive as the Isikoff’s retelling would have him be.
Tonal Crow
@TenguPhule:
Not only that, but it’s far easier to argue lies than to argue the truth. There are a limited number of truths, and they are definite and inflexible. There is, on the other hand, an unlimited supply of infinitely-flexible lies. Also, as I noted yesterday, one can “prove” anything by using a false premise.
If this weren’t so, the GOP long ago would have simply ceased to exist.
MikeJ
Look at how many people in the US eat their god. Pretty sick.
Zifnab
@Tonal Crow:
Lies have a really hard time over the long run, because you need to keep retelling them the same way over and over again or you start ending up with stories that kinda morph and evolve until no one knows what the hell you’re talking about.
Just look at the Great Myth of FDR that the conservatives love to whip out every now and again. One day his popularity revolved on his commie-busting ninja street cred that put him just to the right of Nixon. The next he’s a complete incompetent clown that cause the Great Depression.
Ask a Bill Kristol, Charles Kramthaumer, David Brooks, and Cookie Roberts to tell you about FDR – you’ll get a different story every time. Lies are really easy to invent, but they’re incredibly hard and expensive to maintain. Look at the billions of dollars that get sunk into Global Warming Denial or Creationism science or the Asbestos Apologists. And look how well they’re doing over the long term.
Tonal Crow
@Brick Oven Bill:
I have viewed secret intelligence images of BOB. These images showed him sitting under a bridge, watching a video of approaching traffic. His monitor was very small and dim. When an ambulance approached the bridge, he pressed a button to raise a barrier, upon which was written: “!llort yaP — potS”.
Montysano
Out at lunch just now, and Hannity is spinning like a dervish. The party line seems to be “Yeah, we tortured them, muthafuckers. So. Fucking. What.” And so the wall continues to crumble.
A commenter in the previous thread said “a great truth-telling is coming”, or some such, and I think that’s right. You have to think that, in numerous offices at the CIA, Pentagon, etc, people who were involved in this travesty are getting their stories straight and thinking “I’m damned if I’m going to take a fall for Dick Cheney”.
omen
@NonWonderDog:
so jealous.
Original Lee
The Bush administration pooped in the pond because they had bottled water at home. Now they’re out of bottled water and are trying to keep the rest of us from noticing that they are the reason everybody has to boil the pondwater before drinking it.
I had the misfortune this morning of hearing a Fox commentpuppet claim that we can’t bring the Gitmo prisoners to U.S. soil because they must be classified either as POWs or regular criminals and even though they were captured on the field of battle, they aren’t POWs, because they don’t belong to an organized military force but instead to an international terrorist organization. Also, if they were POWs, they’d have to be sent back to their native countries as soon as the war was over, and if they were regular criminals, they’d have to be tried in court and released after they finished their jail time. But they are really both POWs and regular criminals, so they’re supposed to sit in Gitmo for the rest of their natural-born lives because it’s too complicated to explain.
I think that’s what he said, anyway. I may be missing critical pieces of his argument that were supposed to help it make sense.
Calouste
@sgwhiteinfla:
Thanks.
I don’t think it is common for these groups to refer to themselves as “civil libertarians”. Somehow in the few years that I have hung around in the leftish blogosphere I have never heard anyone use this term. It not that civil liberty groups and libertarians have much in common, is it?. It feels to me like one of those right-wing code words, but it is well possible that I am wrong.
Tonal Crow
@Zifnab:
Yes, but. Creationism still has hundreds of millions of devotees, and decides critical elections — 150 years after Darwin. Global warming denial has delayed prevention of catastrophic climate change for decades — and might have delayed the response long enough to make it ineffective. Then we can talk about religion….
Shawn in ShowMe
Isikoff was the same guy who falsely reported the “Koran flushed down the toilet” story and claimed that in investigating Clinton’s sex life he was “acting in good faith”. So yeah, I have some doubts about his integrity.
sgwhiteinfla
Calouste
They are referred to as civil libertarian groups all the time and it has nothing to do with libertarian philosphy. Check out the headline at TPM.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/points-of-friction-obama-meets-with-civil-libertarians-human-rights-activists.php
Krista
Heh — that sounds like when my husband was in New Zealand. He was chatting with some Maori about bone carving, and they invited him back to their place. They’re all sitting around chatting when the guy reaches into a cupboard and pulls out a trash bag — the size of one you’d use in your kitchen garbage — stuffed full of weed.
He doesn’t remember much else from that day, evidently.
Shawn in ShowMe
But in the context of political debate, it’s crucial to win the debate now, not thirty years from now. For example, Jimmy Carter was telling the truth about the need for energy independence and the Republicans lied. That was a debate that we needed to win back then. The repercussions of not doing so have been disastrous.
DarrenG
Steve Benen, Glennzilla, and Adam Serwer are also full of win on the topic of “zomg, the terrists gonna git us if they come here!”:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_05/018283.php
InflatableCommenter
@Krista:
I just realized that I have taken the most boring trips over the years …..
robertdsc
Colonel Jessup is a real American. Also.
/101st Chairborne
AhabTRuler
@Krista: Dear High Times,
I never thought I would write a letter like this…
someguy
@ JenJen
There were war crimes trials because the Nazis were trying to eliminate whole races and religions, and engaged in execution-style massacres of civilian populations, along with unconsented human experimentation, and systemic abuse of POWs. The Japanese did the same stuff, except (mostly) without the religious/racial aspect – though some Koreans and Chinese would beg to differ. You commit genocide or attempted genocide, it’s a war crime. You kill a bunch of civilians in the course of carrying out a war – it’s controversial but not unambiguously a war crime. So a few AQ are probably guilty of warcrimes but most rank and file probably aren’t, and if we put them on trial in U.S. courts they will have a colorable claim that *they* are victims of a warcrime perpetrated by the U.S. government. At this point we have no legal basis whatsoever to hold most captured AQ, so all the stuff going on about Bagram and renditions and Gitmo is a three card monte game aimed at keeping the detainees boxed up and out of U.S. courts for as long as possible.
Bostondreams
I haven’t read through all the comments, but has ANYONE here seen Jesse Ventura make Sean Hannity twist himself into a pretzel and proclaim America is better now than it was before Bush?
And this bit (I’m paraphrasing):
Ventura: I think he is a very intelligent man…
Hannity: Oh, come on! He reads from a teleprompter!
Ventura: No, no..
Hannity: a teleprompter!
Ventura: Okay, look, at least we have a President who can read one!
Here is the piece.
someguy
Civil Libertarians = protecting your rights
Libertarians – protecting big business from you
OniHanzo
Damn. I got about as far as “CNN just had James Inhofe on talking” before my early warning douchebag alert system overwhelmed my senses and made me run for the covers.
JL
@Bostondreams: That was hilarious. The President is sometimes in a voluble mood also.. Thanks to John for that catch.
binzinerator
@Old Gringo:
It seemed obvious to me way back when we first heard about Guantanamo. Eventually we either have to accept that by law they cannot be held and accept the loss of security, or that our laws regarding basic things like due process don’t matter anymore. It’s a fork. We either lose something that’s very important to us, or we lose everything.
When they began lawlessly imprisoning these people they were basically guaranteeing we’d one day have to make this choice.
The big mistake was when people didn’t create their own 3rd option and throw that fucker Bush out of office when he first tried this.
But there wasn’t enough spine in the people in this country. And when the Dem leadership said impeachment was off the table, the Bushies knew they were golden.
Every gooper asswipe who insists Bushco kept us safe ought to be punched in the neck. It is obvious they did not. They traded our security for their lawlessness.
Tonal Crow
@someguy:
Ya split the bulls-eye.
JK
I have confidence in our prison system to safely manage any GITMO detainees.
Unlike Sen. Inhofe and his knucklehead colleagues in the Senate, I don’t think the GITMO detainees possess Houdini like escape artist abilities.
I also seriously doubt that any GITMO detainee has the kind of charismatic personality that could incite a few hundred or a few thousand inmates to stage a riot.
Unfortunately, most members of the MSM are falling for this Republican fear-mongering garbage.
AhabTRuler
Am I missing something, because that ain’t the way a Supermax works (think something more imhumane-y, psychological torture-y).
Sasha
Now imagine what it was like when non-wingnuts had to deal with that BS since 2000.
Sasha
@Bostondreams:
Jesse Ventura, may a thousand blessings be upon him.
Here’s him tearing Elisabeth Hasselbeck a new one on The View.