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This post is in: Torture, War on Terror aka GSAVE®, OBAMA IS WORSE THAN BUSH HE SOLD US OUT!!
So basically, in part because Congress is filled with obstinate fools, the Obama administration examined the Bush Gitmo policy for a couple years and decided it was pretty ok. Bunch of cowards led by spineless hacks, we are.
We have nothing to fear trying these people.
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[…] Balloon Juice » Change Change Change When I see someone blaming Obama, instead of Congress, for keeping Gitmo open, it's functionally the same thing as someone talking about the birth certificate. It's not just wrong, it's an indicator of a pervasive, ideology-based, Litlebritdifrnt – March 8, 2011 | 9:05 pm · Link. OT – I think that today I got over menopause, the hot flashes are gone, the night sweats are gone, I can wake up in the morning without my hair being bathed in sweat. Bliss […]
cathyx
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. I said the same thing about the commanders in charge of Manning.
General Stuck
Why didn’t Obama defy congress and move the prisoners to the US, and conduct trials in our civilian courts? I just wish someone would explain that to me, cause I ain’t too bright.
Dennis SGMM
Is there any reason why Obama couldn’t have ordered the military to move these prisoners to brigs on US soil and then remand them to US courts?
Comrade Jake
I don’t know, I think Obama was pretty thoroughly cock-blocked by Congress on moving prisoners to trials here in the US.
Yeah, sure, the black Reagan could have convinced the entire country it was the right thing to do through the fucking bully pulpit, or some such crock of shit.
MattMinus
Nothing to fear except for TERROR!
Corner Stone
You’re damned right he did! And anyone who disagrees with this decision is a godsdamned Firebagger!!
arguingwithsignposts
Oh, man. Posting in an epic thread!
arguingwithsignposts
Oh, man. Posting in an epic thread!
Kmeyer the lurker
The most charitable way I can describe Mr. Obama’s presidency is this:
If you put a healthy tree in the middle of a diseased forest, what happens?
The tree gets sick, the forest doesn’t get well.
I’d like to think this is the case.
trixie larue
The NYT seems to have a slightly different take – there will be trials and Obama admits failure in closing Gitmo. Who would have let him bring the prisoners here for trial? They already tried that and everyone went nuts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/world/americas/08guantanamo.html?ref=us
J. Michael Neal
One thing Greenwald omits is that, while Congress didn’t take action for months, they made it clear from the very beginning that they were going to take action and prevent bringing them to the mainland. There never was an opportunity for the administration to act before Congress did. That would simply have prompted Congress to act faster.
I’m also very curious as to what anyone thinks is a viable alternative to indefinite detention for some of the prisoners. They can’t be tried, in either civilian or military courts, because all of the evidence is tainted by Bush administration policies. If you honestly think that Obama would survive just releasing Khalid Sheik Mohammed and company, you’re a moron. That really would get him impeached.
Like a lot of things, we really don’t have a good way to figure out what Obama does or doesn’t want to do. All we know is that he wants to do more than Congress will let him do. How much? We have no idea. Pretending that you know what he really thinks on the matter is a delusion.
patrick II
I think a major reason we don’t want to try them is to keep up our denial. As it is, the Gitmo prisoners can only be guilty Muslims who hate us for our freedom. We don’t want to hear give voice to the view that we invade their countries, kill their friends and relatives, displace them from their homes, and support the tyrants who enslave them.
Maybe if we promised to put our hands over our ears during trials real hearings would actually be allowed.
Djur
If you read John’s link, Greenwald makes it pretty clear that Obama was never really pushing for an end to the policies that Gitmo represents — just a change of venue.
I agree with Congress anyway. If we’re going to have a lawless dungeon for our national enemies which is a fundamental insult to the Constitution, it might as well be offshore where we don’t have to look at it.
J. Michael Neal
@arguingwithsignposts: Just because the thread is epic doesn’t mean you need to lengthen it with double posts. And don’t try blaming WordPress. We know better.
cleek
@Dennis SGMM:
yes. the last Defense authorization bill pretty much prohibits that.
cleek
@J. Michael Neal:
but but but mind-reading our enemies is one of the four cornerstones of blogging!
Ripley
If you put them on trial, they will send coded messages of resistance and solidarity via their orange jumpsuits.
Cacti
I am outraged.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Howard Dean for President.
blah blah blah blah
Comrade Jake
Obama’s a politician, and the politics were never there for doing what would really be needed to close Gitmo. Sounds good in theory, in practice, not so much really.
Corner Stone
@patrick II:
It also enables the exercise of a lot of unilateral power, both domestically and overseas.
General Stuck
Man, that’s deep, and intuitive. One could even say it mind reading, or at least motive reading. That 90 to 6 vote banning funds for moving all those hundreds of new detainees Obama personally captured, added onto Bush’s, could have been Bully Pulpited, if pushed for.
Oh the many ways Obama is bad/worse than Bush.
Bob Loblaw
Cole trolls his own blog, iteration: 17,283. It couldn’t be helped.
Something, something, Greenwald, Hamsher, something, something, firebaggers, Norquist, PUMAs, something, something, John McCain would’ve nuked Iran by now…there I saved everybody 130 posts of backwash.
The administration should just save everybody a lot of hassle and put the Gitmo detainees on a boat out to sea and let the CIA blow it up with a Predator drone. Nobody would even bat an eye.
Cacti
@General Stuck:
Only Glenn knows what evil lurks in the heart of Obama.
Or is that The Shadow?
meh
Napoleon
Obama is just incompetent. Really, he is.
Maude
@General Stuck:
This will never end. It is All Obama’s fault.
J. Michael Neal
@Cacti: Greenwald knows the evil that lurks in the heart of The Shadow? Cool.
JC
See, now THIS is a thread where it is worthwhile to ask, “did has Obama fail us here”?
Instead of ANSWERING that question, in the affirmative, or in the negative, I have a novel suggestion.
Let’s look at the evidence. I know, crazy talk.
Although I do agree with Cole’s point. “Bunch of cowards led by spineless hacks, we are. We have nothing to fear trying these people”. But whose fault is this (beside ours?)
Point 1: Obama HALTS military trials at Guantanamo Bay, in early 2009.
Point 2: Obama suggests a new military detention procedure, to be administered in the U.S., with new oversight procedures. (Greenwald makes a big deal about this, without talking about Obama halting the trials first, or describing Obama’s thrust here accurately, in my opinion.)
Point 3: At some point, Obama offers civilian trials in the U.S. This is blocked by a scared and whimpering bipartisan Congress. (a bit of license there)
Point 4: Obama continues with the ‘legal limbo’ for many captured prisoners.
Point 5: Obama is okay with the shameful treatment of Bradley Manning. this of course, is enthusiastically endorsed by a scared and whimpering bipartisan Congress.
Point 6: Obama puts in place an ‘indefinite detention process, with ‘new rules’, so it acts as a ‘parole board’, for these prisoners in legal limbo, for when it’s ‘okay’ to release some of these people. Is this a parole board, or a star chamber? Who knows.
I’m missing stuff. Anyone want to chime in, remaining evidence based?
Chuck Butcher
My guess is that the decision was that some kind of trial was better than no trials. That might be better.
On the other hand – I detest fucking cowards and I can think of a whole bunch who deserve the title.
Arclite
Or letting the ones go that have nothing to do with nothing.
General Stuck
@Maude:
I take heart that most Americans approve of the job he is doing and a record number of dems, and especially self described liberal dems approve as well. The blogs are an anomaly, populated by hacks and fools, and the shitheads who love them.
bkny
he doesn’t even try — that’s what i find so shameful.
mr nobel prize winner — it should be revoked.
JC
You realize you are talkin’ about yourself there, right General?
:)
General Stuck
@JC:
Well, I am shithead #3, so yes.
Guster
@General Stuck: Who would you guess is better-informed about the details of policy? ‘Most Americans’ and ‘self-described liberal dems’ or ‘the blogs’ and ‘the shitheads who love them?’
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@bkny: try what?
Mike Kay (True Grit)
btw, if military trials are good enough for the members of the US military, then they should be good enough for those fighting against the military.
Cacti
This isn’t change that I can believe in.
Omnes Omnibus
@cleek:
What are the other four?
Dennis SGMM
@cleek:
Do you mean to say the the seemingly unlimited Commander-in-Chief powers of the President have been circumscribed by Congress? I can only hope than when a good, white Republican is back at the helm those powers will be restored.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Guster: bloggers are more informed that’s why they overwhelmingly supported John Edwards during the 2008 primaries.
Lolis
@Dennis SGMM:
Well, because Congress specifically voted to block funding for the president to move the prisoners. Even Russ Feingold voted against the president on that one. I think the president deserves a pass on this one. He tried to do the right thing several times and was shot down by everyone. The Bradley Manning thing is another story … That is deeply disturbing and something the president could quickly change if he wanted.
Kryptik
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
Which necessarily makes the assumption that all these folks really are the kinds who have fought against our military, which has proven to be a very bad assumption to make with these detainees.
General Stuck
@Guster:
You mean the policy, that absolutely forbids Obama to bring the Bush detainees onto American soil for any reason? Or, the one where fools and hacks on blogs pretend that is not the case? Even a little.
Being better informed does not necessarily make a person right. But it does afford less excuse for being wrong.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Dennis SGMM: or a good white Democrat who decides to round up Japanese american citizens in concentration camps.
Paula
@JC:
Wow. I am impressed that someone is actually looking through evidence here. Congratulations.
joe from Lowell
When I see someone blaming Obama, instead of Congress, for keeping Gitmo open, it’s functionally the same thing as someone talking about the birth certificate.
It’s not just wrong, it’s an indicator of a pervasive, ideology-based, evidence-impervious wrongness.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Kryptik:how do you know that?
patrick II
@Corner Stone:
Agreed. And I guess in two ways — letting overseas “threats” know that we can lock them up for life for any reason we like with no recourse to truth or justice or the supposed American way, while at the same time domestically imposing silence so we can continue with our illusions.
Maude
@Lolis:
Please, Obama cannot intervene in the Manning case.
It would be a political move.
What’s deeply disturbing is that you don’t understand this.
Guster
@General Stuck: So … you’re guessing that the bloggers and shitheads are better-informed?
In which case your statement is: I take heart that less-informed Americans approve of the job he is doing and the better-informed Americans are an anomaly.
I understand that you think in this case the bloggers and shitheads are wrong (though I wonder if the issue is as simple as you pretend: was there nothing Obama could have done to prevent that policy from being enacted?)–but do you suppose that there is any correlation between being better-informed and disapproving of the president?
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@joe from Lowell: but most bloggers have never liked Obama. Self described liberal Democrats who actually vote in primaries and caucuses like and love Obama, but not the keyboard commandos.
Angry Black Lady
@Comrade Jake: seriously. @Maude: jesus christ. i can’t even take it today.
can someone answer me this (fully knowing that i am an ozombie): what were his alternatives? seriously i want to know what his alternatives were? it’s my understanding that he got blocked by congress, couldn’t get any other countries to take these assholes, and so tweaked the existing system and is proceeding with military trials. it’s either that, let them fucking go, or keep them in gitmo until 2016.
can someone tell me what else he should be doing. someone who knows something about this shit?
fucking hell.
Lolis
@Maude:
I don’t want him to intervene in the case, just the conditions under which Manning is being held. I see no reason why he should not be doing that or have his Secretary of Defense do that.
joe from Lowell
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
Every single person who supported Mike Gravel wrote about it on Daily Kos.
Every single one.
General Stuck
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
The tribunals will either be constitutional, or they won’t be. The SCOTUS, bless their wingnutty hearts, have been pretty good at defining that/
And missed in this affair, along with congress keeping the status quo on Gitmo, they also, in their infinite stupidity, made it harder to transfer those designated for release to a country that will take them.
Angry Black Lady
@Napoleon: is he? or is he hamstrung by a bunch of idiots in congress. maybe it’s some combination of the two. but fuck me running, i’m so tired of this crap.
i think i need to stay away from the internets tonight.
joe from Lowell
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
I don’t think that’s quite it. I think most bloggers liked Obama just fine. He’s likable enough, Hillary. (heh)
I think what’s going on is that angry people write on the internet more than satisfied people, and individuals write more about what angers them than about what they’re satisfied with.
cathyx
@Maude: Yes, we wouldn’t want our Commander in Chief to speak out against torture. That would be a political move, whatever that means.
jwb
@Maude: Everything is Obama’s fault. We should add that to our ritual denunciation of Stalin and the Broccoli Mandate.
Angry Black Lady
@joe from Lowell: YES.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Guster:
there is no data showing bloggers are either better informed, similarly informed, or less informed that non blogger.
joes527
@General Stuck: OK. I can play this game.
So why didn’t he just leave the turd sitting at congress’s doorstep where it belongs rather than issuing an executive order saying that it isn’t a turd.
Comrade Jake
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
No shit. Anyone else seen “Petey” these days?
joe from Lowell
@Guster: Teabagger internets trolls are much, much better informed than the average American.
Wholly wrong-headed fanatics are often very well-informed.
jwb
@bkny: The Nobel Prize should never have been given. But that’s the Nobel Prize Committee’s fault, not Obama’s. Oops, I forgot it’s Obama’s fault, and I renounce Stalin and the Broccoli Mandate.
Svensker
Whose ever fault it is, it is just dang pathetic and sad. The fact that the entire congress voted to keep those scary terrorists out of the U.S. just depresses the hell out of me.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@cathyx: why do care about manning? now you may say torture, but there are plenty prisoners in this country who are in similar situations, and I don’t hear a single blogger complaining about prisoner abuse at Leavenworth or Pelican Bay.
Maude
@Lolis:
You need to do some reading about this. Go back to the Manning post a day or two ago here and read what Soonergrunt and others had said.
Corner Stone
@Lolis:
People keep mentioning St. Russ on this. It’s my understanding, and I’m happy to be corrected, that Russ voted against moving them because:
So maybe it’s not as clearcut as some people would like to suggest.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Maude:
Or headlines to that effect.
joe from Lowell
@joes527:
There are actually two very goof reasons for that.
1. Because Congress might go and pass a law, like the Bush-era Detainee Treatment Act or Military Commissions Act, that enshrines as law – not just an executive order – the use of these commissions for terrorism cases.
2. Because Congress might continue to do nothing, and then nobody gets a trial.
Which of those alternatives do you deem superior to what Obama is doing?
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@joe from Lowell: I completely agree. That’s why people make a mistake when they declare themselves to be the “Base”, when blogging is not a random survey of sentiment, rather a emotion and entertainment based form of communication. “I think, therefore I am” is now “I’m angry, therefore I blog.”
jwb
@Mike Kay (True Grit): The worst of it is that we’d be having this same conversation, mutatis mutandis, if HRC had been elected.
Maude
@Angry Black Lady:
Mother told me there’s be days like this.
It is really blame Obama day here on the intertubes. Cut your finger? Blame Obama.
@cathyx:
I hate to be rude but STFU.
General Stuck
@Guster:
First, I didn’t say us shitheads were wrong on this issue, only that we spend our time inexplicably answering stupid questions from the fools and hacks. I can only describe this as love as some kind.
The only thing Obama could have done was either break the law, declare martial law, or go the unitary executive route when he issued his signing statement recently on the defense bill, disagreeing with congress and those provisions containing all of this chickenshit restrictions from congress.
This was not a case of possible arm twisting a few senators to get the votes needed. It was nearly total and was quite vehement opposition from goopers and dems in both chambers of congress, to moving and trying Bush’s prisoners here on American soil. And can be traced directly to opposition of the overwhelming majority of American citizens who felt the same way. That is where the fault of this bullshit is found.
Maude
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
Oh, that is good.
It is they came out of the woodwork night.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Corner Stone: A Feingold apologist. That’s rich. Tell me why did Feingold refuse to sign the public option petition by PCCC. Tell me whey did Feingold personally go to the White House and beg them to postpone the tax vote until after the election.
jwb
@joe from Lowell: “too very goof reasons…”
Awesome typo!
Guster
@joe from Lowell: Do you really think so? In my experience, teabagger trolls are laughably ill-informed–but I agree that they’re fanatically dedicated.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@jwb: True. But if Edwards was somehow elected, the blogosphere would be giving him one pass after another. After all, they gave him the biggest pass of all, they forgave him for his disgusting iraq invasion cheerleading. I don’t think the 100,000 dead iraqis forgave him.
Paula
@Guster:
Buddy … that question’s comedy gold!
I read tons of pixel from the likes of the A-list left blogs that praise FDR even while that sonofabitch imprisoned American citizens and, in the opinion of actual members of the Socialist and Progressive Party movements of his era, subsumed any serious threat to the Democratic party from the left.
Apparently, per some of the people on this blog, Harry Truman desegregated the military all by himself with the magic wand known as the Executive order.
Oh and that Obama can totally to go back and try Bush et al for war crimes, because, hey we tried the Nazis and the Japanese for war crimes and it would be The Right Thing to Do! (Never mind that an American president is still the only one who’s managed to drop atomic bomb (TWICE) and AFAIK we still haven’t moved to try and designate that motherfucker as a war criminal.)
Per the topic actually on hand … it does seem rather funny that POTUS cannot just “whip up” federal jurisdiction somewhere in the US when he has dire need, but as I remember I think there are a lot of issues about eminent domain that are also pretty controversial no?
Bob Loblaw
Can I get a ruling on when the executive is/isn’t to be blamed for policies undertaken in his jurisdiction vs. being a silent martyr stymied by a corrupt permanent state apparatus?
Is Wen Jiabao accountable for China’s journalistic repression and policy of forced labor towards political prisoners? Or is he personally exonerated compared to the system at large and the Standing Committee?
How you answer that question will go a long way in determining your credibility in excusing this current US government’s autocratic tendencies.
joe from Lowell
@cathyx: I have a big problem with the abuse of solitary confinement in our prison system, too – one that goes back before Bradley Manning – but I don’t abide by the promiscuous use of the term “torture” like you just used it, especially in light of what we all learned went on under the Bush administration – in the Salt Pit, on Diego Garcia, in Abu Ghraib.
It’s like calling some tin-pot dictator a Nazi. It helps to cover up the great, unique evil of those episodes. By drawing an equivalency with a much lower level of abuse, in an effort to make the latter episodes seem worse, it also works to make the earlier episodes seem not as bad as they are.
Baud
If Obama really wanted Gitmo closed, he would fly down there on Air Force One and start picketing just like those good folks in Wisconsin.
Paula
@Guster:
Buddy … that question’s comedy gold!
I read tons of pixel from the likes of the A-list left blogs that praise FDR even while that sonofabitch imprisoned American citizens and, in the opinion of actual members of the So.shul.est and Progressive Party movements of his era, subsumed any serious threat to the Democratic party from the left.
Apparently, per some of the people on this blog, Harry Truman desegregated the military all by himself with the magic wand known as the Executive order.
Oh and that Obama can totally to go back and try Bush et al for war crimes, because, hey we tried the Nazis and the Japanese for war crimes and it would be The Right Thing to Do! (Never mind that an American president is still the only one who’s managed to drop atomic bomb (TWICE) and AFAIK we still haven’t moved to try and designate that motherfucker as a war criminal.)
Per the topic actually on hand … it does seem rather funny that POTUS cannot just “whip up” federal jurisdiction somewhere in the US when he has dire need, but as I remember I think there are a lot of issues about eminent domain that are also pretty controversial no?
arguingwithsignposts
I for one am surprised soonergrunt hasn’t shown up yet.
joe from Lowell
@Bob Loblaw:
He isn’t to be blamed when he puts up a fight to overturn those policies, even if he loses.
General Stuck
@joes527:
I have been resisting mentioning GG’s bullshit on this thread, but have no choice in order to answer your question.
from the GG story
“Codify” is a specific term used to expressly state a matter of federal law, or public law. An EO does not ‘codify” anything. It is simply a executive guideline, usually with some instruction, for federal employees, or the military to carry out certain tasks the president would like done. It is hardly embracing what congress has ordered, especially when Obama offered up another kind of statement when he signed the defense act recently with this bullshit in it. In so many words, saying this is bullshit congress, but you hold the purse strings, so I will obey like in a lawful way, and not a Bush way.
arguingwithsignposts
@Bob Loblaw:
Wait, did you just compare a representative democracy – however flawed – with communist ruled autocratic China?
arguingwithsignposts
@Bob Loblaw:
Wait, did you just compare a representative democracy – however flawed – with communist ruled autocratic China?
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Baud:
Fixt
joe from Lowell
@Guster:
I once saw the phrase “highly but selectively informed.” There’s something else going on with most of them, different from just not knowing what they’re talking about. They know exactly what they’re talking about.
Have you ever come across the variety of Islamophobe who can quote pages and pages of the Koran to “prove” that every Muslim in America is a budding terrorist? These are not uninformed persons.
jwb
@Mike Kay (True Grit): I’ve come to the conclusion that the left is congenitally incapable of rallying around any leader. A sizable portion of us will take our ball home because X either did or did not endorse the Broccoli Mandate. Also, where the fuck is that pony I was promised?
Rpx
The defense authorization bill prohibits funding for the move, yes. But Obama has threatened to veto defense spending bills before over 1) extension of the F-22 fighter production and 2) inclusion of the alternate engine program for the F-35 fighter. So to say that Congress completely tied his hands isn’t fully accurate. If it sounds odd that he felt stopping F-22 and a second engine for F-35 to be a bigger priority that stopping terror trials, that’s just the way it is. Vetoing the defense bill would require him to explain to voters why he was vetoing it, and Obama is not going to go to the wall over Gitmo prisoners. Not a battle he wants to fight.
JPL
Personally I only voted for the President because I thought he was a witch who could twitch his nose and undo all the bad things the previous President did.
After discovering that he has to work within the constraints of the constitution, I have now decided to bang my head on the wall.
Bob Loblaw
@arguingwithsignposts:
I think when discussing this country’s permanent security state apparatus there is serious question whether there is any “representative democracy” involved at all.
arguingwithsignposts
I don’t know why everything is suddenly double-posting.
Baud
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): What, you expect him to fly coach?
Guster
@General Stuck: The reason I’m trying to expand the question beyond this single topic is that I haven’t done my homework on this particular topic. I was just struck by your formulation–and the question stands, “do you suppose that there is any correlation between being better-informed and disapproving of the president?”
If you’re still feeling full of love, though, I’d appreciate being tutored about this stuff.
Why couldn’t Obama have ordered the detainees into brigs on American soil four months into his term?
Who had the power (before the Congressional cut-off of funds) to transfer the detainees into the civilian justice system?
Who has the power to rewrite the structure of ‘military commissions’ such that they were brought into line with the Bill of Rights?
I think anyone who blames Obama and gives Congress a pass is an idiot. But I’ve never seen anyone do that.
Jay B.
@arguingwithsignposts:
In this case what’s the fucking difference?
Both hold people without charges, indefinitely, for no stated reason. There are innocent people in Gitmo, right now, who haven’t been charged with anything. And they’ve been there for years and years. Some have been tortured.
You tell me.
joe from Lowell
@Rpx:
Those votes were close. Bringing his pressure to bear could push the ball across the goal line.
Obama got his ass kicked on Gitmo. He lost by something like 80 votes in the Democratic super-majority Congress. A veto threat isn’t going to change the outcome there.
Guster
@joe from Lowell: Ah! Okay, good point.
arguingwithsignposts
@Jay B.:
Are you fucking kidding me? You need to step back from the pipe, there, guy.
You can’t just selectively say we’re “just like China” based on parts of the whole.
jwb
@Bob Loblaw: Simple test: Do you believe Wen Jiabao’s leadership would be severely weakened, that he might perhaps even be deposed if he took a stand against “journalistic repression and policy of forced labor towards political prisoners”? If the answer is yes, then it is the state apparatus that is at fault.
Guster
@joe from Lowell: Would’ve been the right thing to do, though. (I know, I know–‘and ponies.’)
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: Because you have so much to say! Because you have so much to say!
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@jwb: the left is largely irrelevant. I base this on voting results. Edwards got a measly 17% of the vote in New Hampshire, this after gettin 12% of the vote in 2004. If you charitably attribute the entire 5% gain to the blogosphere — well, that’s not much influence, is it.
And look at Kucinich. Two presidental campaigns in a row. And each time he only receives 1% of the vote. The left just isn’t that large, even with a Democratic primary.
Litlebritdifrnt
OT – I think that today I got over menopause, the hot flashes are gone, the night sweats are gone, I can wake up in the morning without my hair being bathed in sweat. Bliss. That or I am going to die. Meh.
Corner Stone
@arguingwithsignposts: Have you and Omnes been making time in a nearby tree?
freelancer
I met a girl who sang the blues and I asked her for some happy news…
She started singing…
jwb
@Mike Kay (True Grit): Agreed about the complete lack of influence. My point is that a good chunk of the left would be bitching no matter who was elected. Because, for better or worse, that seems to be how the left is wired.
ETA: One reason I tend to give Greenwald some slack, although I often find him extremely irritating, is that I’m fairly confident that he’d be writing the same sort of thing no matter who was in office. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who is going to change his position on an issue based on whether he likes or thinks the guy in power is basically a good guy or thinks the guy is boxed politically boxed in.
JPL
@Guster: When the President first approached closing Gitmo, MSM allowed the republicans to paint a negative picture of the outcome. There was a loud public outcry. Gitmo actually endangers us more because it can be used to recruit suicide bombers. Unfortunately, the MSM doesn’t care about stuff like that.
He could have done it, I suppose but I don’t know if brigs are equipped to hold that many and the repercussions might not have been worth it. There was a lot going on at that time like trying to pass some type of stimulus.
joe from Lowell
One silver lining we can take away from this is that Obama is clearly not adopting this system for terror suspects going forward. Nobody arrested on terror charges has been put into the military system since Obama came to power (except the Ft. Hood Shooter, a solider who’s getting a court martial). People like the Underpants Bomber are being arrested by the FBI and dealt with through the criminal justice system, as they should be.
And, very quietly, nobody is doing anything to change that, not even the preening cowards in Congress who blocked the administration from closing Gitmo or trying those suspects in federal court.
It’s a problem that the remaining Gitmo detainees are going to be tried by military commissions, and that some of them are going to stay in legal limbo, but at least we can say, two years into Obama’s term, that the disease is being isolated, and isn’t affecting the general run of how we deal with terrorism suspects.
Not that that excuses how we’re dealing with the Gitmo detainees, but it’s somewhat better that our problem is about dealing with the old mess that Bush left, as opposed to Obama continuing to make the mess.
Bob Loblaw
@jwb:
Of course. Which means if we’re to be consistent, we should be no more derogatory to the leadership of Wen then we are to Obama. What would you have either of them do?
They’re both gradualist progressives (relative to their individual systems) who are not in full control of their security or human rights policies. But if you’re going to transfer agency from the man to the system, don’t in the next thread start demanding deification of the man again. Consistency please.
Baud
@Mike Kay (True Grit): 12-17% can make a difference in which party controls the national government. It’s really the only power the left has.
Paula
@jwb:
“Congenitally” obfuscates the fact that the online is left is largely made up of young, upper-middle-class educated, and mostly white, people.
They have a “voice” as it were, but whether they’ve figured out how to actually build long-lasting alliances beyond the internet or learn to focus their ideas and to their organizing is a different issue. It’s entirely possible for them to coalesce around issues, but whether they are capable of doing to depends on intellectual maturity that they don’t yet have.
cathyx
@Maude: Intelligent comeback.
@Mike Kay (True Grit): I’m against torture to any and all life forms.
@joe from Lowell: I use the definition of torture that is used by the military handbook and by psychiatric professionals. And what Manning is undergoing is by definition torture.
General Stuck
@Guster:
This is what I wrote Guster
A statement that is simple and appropriately caveated to not assign, or equate better informed with being right. I don’t consider 90 percent of what I read on blogs as better informed, because the “term” better to me has to include accurate, or truthful, in order to be a positive in evaluating Obama’s performance. The blogs are rife with alternate agendas imo. The average democrat out in the countryside is not necessarily uninformed, and I did not say they were, you did however. Or implied it.
As for the rest of your comment, the only part that has some plausibility for action by Obama in this matter, is why couldn’t he have done this in the first four months. I would say, they needed some time to learn what was going on before moving forward with such a complicated issue. And unless they snuck the prisoners into the country unannounced under the cover some secrecy, the congress would have moved to block it then, instead of later. This is not a close issue, and every door was slammed shut in Obama’s face from carrying out this campaign promise.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Baud:
Hardly
Maude
@Jay B.:
We are not like China, we don’t make them pay for the bullet.
If you wrote your comments in China, you’d have to have someone pay for your bullet.
jwb
@Bob Loblaw: Deification? Seriously, get a grip. You can wonder whether certain (in these days most) angles of criticism of Obama from the left are politically productive without thinking the man is a god.
JPL
In the land of magical thinking, Gore would have won and we wouldn’t even be discussing this because there would not have been a Terri Schiavo case being discussed on the Senate floor and John would still be a republican.
eemom
damn, I’ve been waiting all day for this thread. WTF took you so long, Cole?
I turned in my Obot badge after the tax cut extension, so I’m entitled to a little respect on this issue. Which I’m confident I’ll get from this crowd.
Blaming Obama for this is horseshit, pure and simple. He fucking TRIED. The fearmongers, warmongers and p*ssies that comprise 95% of the US Congress wouldn’t let him.
And for Greenwald to say he never really “pushed” for an “end” to the Gitmo “policies”…….well, glad to see he’s all better from the Brazilian jungle cooties, cuz he’s just as full of shit as ever.
jwb
@Paula: Shit, the left, however you want to define it, wouldn’t be able to come to a workable consensus on how to screw in a light bulb. Hell, a good chunk of them would think we’d all be better off doing without the light bulb. Another chunk would admit to liking light bulbs but admit that those who were against them had a point. Well, you know the drill as well as I do.
Baud
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): LOL. Just don’t let the birthers see that picture; it’ll just fuel their conspiracy theories.
Bob Loblaw
@jwb:
Hmm, yes, because deify is exclusively a term used with respect to actual godliness and never as a synonym for words like adore or exalt or celebrate. Never.
In other words, nice dodge.
jwb
@Bob Loblaw: “In other words, nice dodge.”
Project much, dude?
joe from Lowell
@cathyx:
You clearly don’t, and you might as well be apologizing for Bush.
Don’t dilute the word. Don’t pretend that what happened to that poor cabbie in the Salt Pit is kinda sort like how Bradley Manning only gets visitors once a week.
arguingwithsignposts
@Bob Loblaw:
You are such a douche. Arguing exaltation in comments inhabited by a bunch of cynical realists.
Oh, but I forget, you’re bob loblaw the pure.
cathyx
@joe from Lowell: Do you honestly think the only hardship Manning is enduring is only getting visitors once a week? And like I tell my 12 year old, just because someone is doing something worse than you, it doesn’t mean what you are doing isn’t bad. Just because some people are undergoing worse torture than Manning doesn’t mean that Manning isn’t undergoing torture and suffering from it.
No torture in any form should be permitted, period.
Bob Loblaw
@eemom:
Except not really. Regardless of motive reading (where Glenn can never help himself), the administration was prepared from the beginning to pursue a course of indefinite detention without charge or POW status for a sizable fraction of the Gitmo detainees due to untrustworthy security arrangements in Yemen and Pakistan. That was never not true. And never not shameful.
Dream On
So I guess Obama was only following Congressional Orders.
Yep.
JWL
Whaddya mean “we’, Kemo Sabe?
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Bob Loblaw:
I don’t think that deify weighs the same as your given synonyms.
C’mon, dude. You’re my favorite troll. You can do better than that.
Guster
@General Stuck: Well, you’re mostly sidestepping or misunderstanding what I asked, but it’s hardly worth a ‘someone’s wrong on the internet moment,’ so fair enough …
I’m not sure what’s complicated about ‘move them to a maximum security military facility in the US next week.’ That’s why I asked.
Why don’t my other questions have ‘plausibility?’
eemom
@cathyx:
When your signature contribution to multiple threads consists of quoting song lyrics that are clinically dead from overuse……and you’re actually proud enough of that fact to call attention to it……the fact is that nobody capable of formulating an intelligent comeback would be dumb enough to waste it on you.
Bob Loblaw
@jwb:
That’s just embarrassing. You’re the one who started up on word choice in place of actual argument. That is always a dodge in any venue.
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
On the contrary, I think exalt and adore are perfect synonyms for deify. It’s not an uncommon word or usage. Wealth can be deified. Youth can be deified. Status can be deified. Virtues can be deified at the expense of others. People can be deified. Sports teams can be deified.
El Cid
@jwb: I don’t think there’s much of a “right” without a lot of highly paid leaders and groups and organizations. It’s not like the right just sort of spontaneously amalgamates into strong cohesive political blocks.
They are much more predictable at when and how they’ll vote, but that’s not without all the other monied and organized efforts.
When I look around at any place I’ve ever lived in, there’s nothing like that on the liberal / left end. Some tepid county Democrat committees, and varying causes that pop in and out, and groups and movements based in particular issue or ethnic or neighborhood matters.
We already know that right wingers are authoritarian and hierarchical by nature.
That liberals & ‘the left’ (whatever definition is being used nowadays) are not going to do it spontaneously. Closest I remember seeing — seeing because there was actually detectable stuff going on locally, even here in Johjuh — was Democracy For America.
Now there’s nothing around here. It pops up for a bit before an election and then everything fades away.
On the right wing side, there isn’t anywhere you can go or any broadcast you can tune to where there isn’t an organization or figurehead or blatherer reinforcing the party line. And not just various separate groups like the ACLU or some such, but actual movement types.
Maybe it’s fine to just keep seeing it as a moral and psychological issue, but I wouldn’t much expect anything to change in terms of spontaneous self-disciplining of liberal/left types behind a particular leader or agenda.
General Stuck
@Bob Loblaw:
Well, knock me over. For once I agree with something you write here loblaw. Whatever the number is, they, or the recent commission has deemed too dangerous to release, should most certainly be granted POW status. I have been calling for Obama to do this from the beginning. I’m not sure how that would affect their day to day treatment as it currently is, but it needs to be done as a matter of law, and should have already been done, imo, regardless of additional trials.
I think it is 50 or so, but could be wrong on that.
cathyx
@eemom: And yet another intelligent comeback. Really, no substance to the subject at hand.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Hey, I have more or less solve my issue with that. Fucking MacBook.
arguingwithsignposts
@Bob Loblaw:
Says the man who compared the U.S. to China. I think jwb was spot on.
joe from Lowell
@cathyx:
Do you really have to work this hard to avoid acknowledging the point about dumbing down Bush’s crimes? Did the whole “No, your English teacher isn’t a Nazi, even if he’s a dick” point completely elude you?
I’m not interested in whether you can spin your definition enough to convince yourself that you’re not wrong. You’re being sloppy in your language. You’re deliberately choosing that term to try to draw a comparison, and then you weasel away from it by acknowledging that, ok, there is a difference.
Nor should the abuse of prisoners. Nor should inhumane conditions. You don’t have to insist on the equivalence between the Salt Pit and Quantico in order to oppose what’s being done to Manning, and to about 100,000 other people.
jwb
@Bob Loblaw: You started the evasion by seizing on the rhetorical flourish. What part of “You can wonder whether certain (in these days most) angles of criticism of Obama from the left are politically productive without thinking the man is a god” don’t you understand as a argumentative retort? And if you prefer, substitute, “without valorizing the man” for “without thinking the man a god” for all the good it will do you. As I said, you specialize in projection.
joe from Lowell
@Dream On:
I love people who impress themselves by repeating cliches they half understand.
Watching someone insist that the doctrine of presumption of innocence means that nobody should offer an opinion about a suspect’s guilt is hi-larious, too. “What part of innocent-until-proven-guilty don’t you understand?”
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Amazing that after everything that’s been happening in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, we’re back to purity wars.
Actually, no, not amazing. So what if the Republicans are waging war on the working class? By their selective white privileged reasoning, Obama is as bad as Bush! So vote
RepublicanNader! They’re well off, they’ll be alright. Let the lower classes martyr for the cause.Mike Kay (True Grit)
the quality for trolling in this thread is poor. I was expecting better. I guess the better trolls are watching Charlie Sheen.
LT
Why are we even discussing this? It’s already done.
…
joe from Lowell
@General Stuck: I agree, they need to be given POW status. Then, we can legally hold them until the conflict ends. The conflict with al Qaeda.
All nice and legal.
cathyx
@joe from Lowell: I’m not sure what your argument is. I agree that no abuse and torture should ever be permitted, to anyone.
Look, I voted for Obama, and I am extremely disappointed in many decisions he is making. The one I’m discussing right now is his decision to remain silent on what is happening to Manning.
joe from Lowell
@cathyx:
Then allow me to paste it here, from where I last made it:
jwb
@El Cid: If it ever came down to it, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like a left in lockstep. It would be nice, however, if we we didn’t spend as much time and energy fighting among ourselves so we could spend more time and energy finding productive ways to take the fight to the right.
magurakurin
@joe from Lowell:
this. That’s a huge point that is never mentioned. They aren’t putting anybody in Gitmo anymore. This is Bush’s mess and he shit the bed so long and so hard, that it isn’t going to be cleaned up. Even the Bush administration quickly realized what a fuck up it was and they really didn’t put many people into Gitmo much after 2003-4. So, while Obama hasn’t been able to close it down, and it looks he might not ever be able to, they essentially aren’t accepting new applicants for positions in Gitmo.
A lot of people have been released and there are plans to release and try most of those who remain. The problem is the 40 or so who will be indefinite detainees. Yes, this is an ugly, ugly civil rights offense. But the reality of the situation is that the Bush administration fucked up the evidence so badly that those 40 will never be convicted, anywhere…because they were tortured. The other reality is, even though it has been proven in a court, is that those 40 people are bad motherfuckers. We can sit at our computers and say, “well release them anyway,” but if any of us were actually faced with that choice it would be much harder. Just the other day 22 people were blown up in Pakistan. While the whole Bush Era “911 changed everything this the greatest threat since WWII” policy guidlines were and remain utter bullshit, the world is not a peaceful Eden. There are seriously bad actors in the world and 40 of them are in Gitmo. If released, they are pretty much going to kill someone somewhere. I am very sympathetic to the argument that the principle of law is more important than that risk, but I also am sympathetic to the fact that for the people actually having to make that choice, between principle and real people blowing up, it isn’t as easy as it is for me sitting in my room in front of my computer.
The world has been a pretty fucked up place for as long as I have been aware enough to understand it(around 1978) but the over the top hyperbole about some of this I think is unhelpful. I find it hard to deal productively with someone who truly believes the US and US policy is as fucked up or more fucked up than it was in say 2003. Better is a relative term, yes, but “better” has a very different meaning than “worse” or “the same.” In my opinion things are clearly “better,” and I’ll take whatever I can get.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Mike Kay (True Grit): Bob Loblaw is usually top troll in my book. Well informed and well spoken. A fair arguer who will admit missteps. But jwb really handed his ass to him on the China simile. And so it was on to semantical bickering.
General Stuck
@Guster:
I will try to once again answer this question already answered by me an others on this thread.
The power of the purse is plenary for congress, or total. If they don’t want something done by a president, they just pass a law saying not one cent of federal funds can be used to do it.
There are some limits, as congress cannot bar a president from carrying out an explicit requirement by the constitution. from what I have learned there is some question on this concerning the actual 9-11 attacks. Since it was done on American soil, the president has the authority to try those folks here in the states. But not the others who were picked up overseas for other alleged crimes not on American soil.
Eeemom will likely clobber me for playing lawyer again, but Obama alluded to this in his signing statement. As I don’t think he has to try the likes of KSM in US courts, rather than by a military commission, but to do so in defiance of congress would likely create a constitutional crisis. And military tribunals, are not new, and if afforded fundamental constitutional provisions, are not the kangaroo courts that Bush was trying to pull off, and got stopped by the SCOTUS.
arguingwithsignposts
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
Well, loblaw left that one hanging out over the plate at about 50 mph – to borrow a phrase from LGM.
Omnes Omnibus
@jwb: I ran out of windshield wiper fluid in my car this morning and you know whose fault it is?
That’s right; it’s Obama’s fault.
(NB: I didn’t actually run out, but the SID unit in the car told me the fluid level was low.)
joe from Lowell
@cathyx:
You can do that without the dangerous false equivalency of using the specific, questionable word “torture,” and it would be a good idea to do so. I know it adds a nice rhetorical flourish, grabs a little more moral high ground, but it does so at a cost. For one, instead of the discussion being about whether Manning’s treatment is appropriate, it becomes a discussion of whether Manning’s treatment is torture, instead of abuse or inhumane conditions or a violation of regulations. Is that semantic point actually the point? Is seizing that last inch of moral highground, rather than making the point that something wrong is happening, really so essential?
And also, see the point above about calling every thug a “Nazi.” It demeans and minimizes what happened when you equate it to such a lower level of abuse…and for what? To feel a little more righteous when you make your denunciations?
cathyx
@joe from Lowell: Like I said, I don’t see where we are differing on our opinion. we agree that abuse and torture however you want to define either, is bad.
What I went on to add is that it bothers me that Obama has remained silent on the Manning issue, and I use that case because it is front and center right now.
Tim
@cathyx:
Cathyx, it’s best to ignore JFL altogether. An Obot thru and thru, his overarching intention is to deflect and distract from any criticism of the great and powerful, but somehow helpless also, O.
See, you say Manning is being “tortured,” which of course, he is, and that the O can and should put a stop to it.
JFL wants to take you down a side road from that simple idea, and get you sidetracked into various meanings of the word “torture” whispered by the voices in his head, and how what they say has oh such very serious implications for the treatment of all other prisoners everywhere in the world.
When a thread focuses on Obama’s many post-election mendacities, you can be sure that JFL, General Stuck, Eemom, and others will slither in to call black white and up down.
Oh, and the O just can’t overcome that meanie congress! He has NO power!
Mike Kay (True Grit)
Let me ask the Manning supporters a question.
Put aside the issue of prison abuse. That’s an important issue, but separate nonetheless.
If overwhelming evidence is presented that manning downloaded and passed classified material that eventually led to deaths, how will you react?
joe from Lowell
@magurakurin:
It galls me that Bush’s DOJ told him this was going to happen, as far back as 2001 or early 2002, and the Bushies just didn’t care. They knew they were leaving this mess, but hey, that’s the next guy’s watch.
gwangung
This tells me that you have about a good idea about the use of power in Washington as the folks you’re criticizing.
Bob Loblaw
@arguingwithsignposts:
If one does not wish to entertain comparisons to the Chinese government, one should refrain from acting like the Chinese government. Locking up even a single person without charge indefinitely is totalitarian no matter what flag it is done under.
@jwb:
Probably the part of understanding what that has to do with my point about the agency of lone operators within a broader system. I asked a question about hypocrisy. You didn’t answer, told me to “get a grip,” and then sought to redefine terms on an unrelated point. And now you want me to instead answer to the productivity of political criticism. So yeah, I’m finding it hard to see where I’m at fault here.
Is Barack Obama responsible for the security policies of his government in association with the Congress and the permanent bureaucracy? Yes or no? And either way, is that same consideration given to foreign heads of state?
Bob Loblaw
@arguingwithsignposts:
If one does not wish to entertain comparisons to the Chinese government, one should refrain from acting like the Chinese government. Locking up even a single person without charge indefinitely is totalitarian no matter what flag it is done under.
@jwb:
Probably the part of understanding what that has to do with my point about the agency of lone operators within a broader system. I asked a question about hypocrisy. You didn’t answer, told me to “get a grip,” and then sought to redefine terms on an unrelated point. And now you want me to instead answer to the productivity of political criticism. So yeah, I’m finding it hard to see where I’m at fault here.
Is Barack Obama responsible for the security policies of his government in association with the Congress and the permanent bureaucracy? Yes or no? And either way, is that same consideration given to foreign heads of state?
joe from Lowell
@Tim: Just to refresh my memory, exactly which thread did I stomp you into the ground in?
I’ve been at this a while, and it is always the case that people who just can’t stand that I’m daring to make a point are people who are nursing a grudge against me.
joe from Lowell
@gwangung: How much do you want to be that the person writing:
spent 2007 fuming that the Democrats could end the Iraq War instantaneously over Bush’s objection by not passing a funding bill?
cathyx
@Mike Kay (True Grit): Let’s say he did just what you are say he did. That still doesn’t make it ok to torture or abuse him. If he is found guilty in a court of law, then he should be sentenced to the appropriate punishment set down by the court.
arguingwithsignposts
@Bob Loblaw:
Because not knowing what to do with some people who were locked up by the previous government is *exactly like* Tienanmen Square, jailing journalists, Internet lockdowns, slave labor, etc. etc.
Comparison FAIL, loblaw. just admit it and move on.
arguingwithsignposts
@Bob Loblaw:
Because not knowing what to do with some people who were locked up by the previous government is *exactly like* Tienanmen Square, jailing journalists, Internet lockdowns, slave labor, etc. etc.
Comparison FAIL, loblaw. just admit it and move on.
Omnes Omnibus
@joe from Lowell: Tim is simply an all purpose ass. You might not have done anything to provoke him, but then again, I can’t see how stomping him would be difficult.
arguingwithsignposts
dammit! it’s spreading
joe from Lowell
@Tim:
Hear that, you two?
The fans in New York never bothered to boo Johnny Pesky. Ted Williams used to catch hell, though.
Hey, Ted: when I haunt your nightmares, what does my facial hair look like?
joe from Lowell
Er, Tim, that is.
Ruckus
On this issue I think Glen is maybe a little too close. As bad as all this is, how do you clean it up? Someone up thread pointed out that putting new people in Gitmo has stopped. If so the clean up is what’s left. That seems to have been derailed by congress so what’s left?
This leaves me with the best take away from Glen’s post.
The anti-Muslim McCarthyite Rep. Peter King (R-NY)
A perfect description. McCarthyite. Thing is, originally there was only one McCarthy, and that sucked. Now there are too many to keep track of.
So between the McCarthy clones and moronic assholes that want to take us back to the 19th century (some of whom are the same) it’s getting pretty hard to remain civil.
Anybody got any ideas on how to go forward, rather than to keep lobbing stones at each other over things it doesn’t look like we can change?
joe from Lowell
@Bob Loblaw:
That is totally not a yes/no question.
You’d have to look at each different security policy, and the specifics of how it came to be and what role Obama did or did not play in it, in order to parcel out responsibility.
Barack Obama has zero responsibility for the legal status of cocaine. He has almost total responsibility for those Somali pirates who were shot by the SEAL snipers.
maye
@arguingwithsignposts: You either charge them with a crime and put them on trial or you let them go. Period.
And with international terror suspects, after you let them go, you follow them and find out who they associate with. That would be IF you had better than third rate intelligence services at your disposal.
In other words, you can NOT be Josef Stalin – and – further your national interests in fighting international terrorism.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@cathyx: don’t defect. just answer the question. How will you feel about him?
arguingwithsignposts
@maye:
Dammit, first Obama was the Chinese, now he’s Stalin. Will somebody make up your minds!?
cathyx
@Mike Kay (True Grit): I have no feelings for him. I don’t know him personally. I don’t think I have even a fraction of the information that is involved with this case. None of us do. I refrain from passing judgment either way until the information is brought forth.
maye
@arguingwithsignposts: I have no idea what Obama is thinking, but detaining people forever without trial is Stalinesque. Perhaps you could explain why it is not.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus:
What does your laptop have to do with kissing AWS?
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. One assumes.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@cathyx: that’s cool. Glad to see that. Sadly, vaarious rank and file bloggers keep referring to him as a hero. These people are gonna look like fools when the evidence is presented.
arguingwithsignposts
@maye: No, I can’t. Because IANAL. I’m guessing the shit is really fucked up and the Con. Law Prof. and his Justice Dept. are trying to figure out WTF to do about it. But that’s just a guess, and a pretty un-educated one, I’ll admit. But then I don’t go around comparing him to Stalin and the Chinese gov’t – I’m just waiting for the H word.
BTW, I have checked, and there have been no mass genocides in the last two years, no bloody purges of opposition leaders, and – as near as I can tell – there will be an election in 2012 to unseat this “Stalinesque” figure if you’d like.
So drop the fucking comparison to fascist regimes.
Tim
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
If overwhelming evidence is presented that manning downloaded and passed classified material that eventually led to deaths, how will you react?
Since we’re fantasizing about “overwhelming evidence” in support of our positions here, I would argue that the release of the classified material will SAVE many more lives than it supposedly causes to be lost, by throwing a wrench into the works of the U.S. military/industrial/security/political complex which in the case of Iraq alone is responsible for the death, mutilation, and geographic dislocation of hundreds of thousands of people.
So any deaths allegedly attributable to Manning’s actions would have to be weighed against the lives he saved.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@maye: that’s outrageous! outrageous! how dare you compare him to stalin, when everyone knows Obama is worse than Hitler!
Bob Loblaw
@arguingwithsignposts:
Then you don’t understand how comparisons work. Attributes and characteristics can be similar or dissimilar without saying anything about the whole.
An apple and a fire hydrant can both be described as red. They are like each other in that respect. On the other hand, one is a fruit and one is metal, so I wouldn’t go eating them both on the basis of color alone.
The US and China both exhibit fascist tendencies. One far, far more so than the other. But the thing about fascism is that it’s wrong no matter the extent or intensity. It’s always wrong.
@joe from Lowell:
So which of the two is it with respect to indefinite detention? And then, if responsibility resides solely with the courts and Congress, and not with the executive and the military, I expect that determination of agency to be applied consistently in other similar scenarios. That’s all.
The executive branch and the military are the original bad actors. If they aren’t primarily responsible, then that means you are putting more weight on the failure of the other branches to properly regulate and supervise. Do you maintain that same theory of regulatory culpability to the events of the financial sector crisis? Why or why not?
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Tim: That’s what Bush would say. Congratulations, you’ve become a neo-con.
magurakurin
@maye:
I think it has been stated pretty clearly several times in this thread. Simply discussing “detaining people without trial” is sufficiently bad to warrant serious consideration. But if one decides to toss in a reference to Stalin, who murdered 20,000,000 million of his own citizens, does two unhelpful things: One, it weakens the original point because now the argument has spiraled into hyperbole and will only cause some who are listening to turn the channel. Two, it seriously dilutes the very real and enormous evil that Stalin was and represents.
arguingwithsignposts
@Bob Loblaw:
Actually, an apple could also be green. Would you like to retry?
cathyx
@Mike Kay (True Grit): Or you are.
eemom
@magurakurin:
That is excellently stated and spot on, imo.
Quick, exit the blog before a troll eats your brain.
junebug
Jim Webb is a pretty good indicator of this. I knew him from back in the day when he dissed Vietnamese in a Parade insert in my old local paper. His conversion to a Dem, I looked at with skepticism. He’s proven to only wanting to make a point — even though he offered some reasonable and needed legislation on prisons — he’s quitting and that’s disappointing.
It’s just fear. Fear that has been ratcheted up more and more by our media and the freelancers that we can all access.
I’m almost at the point of being despondent. The only national news I can listen to cow-tows to the 27%ers and the progress made in the Middle East is falling pray to god bothers.
Steve M says those of us out here in the red sea should consider moving. I just can’t do that. I want to hold onto hope.
Bob Loblaw
@arguingwithsignposts:
jwb can breathe a sigh of relief. Because THAT was the mother of all evasions.
I’m surprised you didn’t say that “red” is a culturally relative term with no objective meaning unless specifically tied to an empirical wavelength of light, and besides, I’m being inconsiderate to the colorblind community by using it in any context whatsoever. Also, fire hydrants can totally be yellow too. Neener neener.
maye
I did not say Obama is the same as Stalin. I said detaining people indefinitely without trial is something Stalin did. I stand by that statement.
Furthermore, imprisoning people without trial is a very real and enormous evil – all by itself – no matter who perpetrates it.
mantis
And then, if responsibility resides solely with the courts and Congress, and not with the executive and the military, I expect that determination of agency to be applied consistently in other similar scenarios.
Don’t we have a system set so that responsibility in toto never really belongs solely to one branch? And isn’t it true that those same mechanisms that exist to prevent the executive from engaging in tyranny can also be used to prevent the executive from eliminating inherited tyrannical policies?
eemom
@maye:
Me neither, but I doubt he’s thinking about Manning, nor should he be.
This is kind of a prime example of a matter that is delegated far down the food chain from the fucking president of the United States. And the only people who believe otherwise are the ones stupid enough to believe what Greenwald and Hamsher tell them.
But take heart — you have plenty of company.
junebug
@Djur:
And congress doesn’t enter into the equation at all, really? That the damn Dems folded and didn’t support ending the ugly thing that is Gitmo.
I get so tired of people not seeing the reality of it all. Sure, Obama could have just acted like Gov. Scott in FLA and done everything by executive order, but how is that democracy?
(And don’t answer me that we are a republic.)
eemom
@arguingwithsignposts:
I’ve seen yellow fire hydrants too!
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@cathyx: This is the problem with being emotional, it prevents someone from following an argument without it being diagrammed.
I haven’t called him a hero or a villain. I’m on repeated record saying, I don’t care about manning. That is why I keep asking why in world does anybody care about his specific case. The people who have decided to take sides are the one who will look bad.
arguingwithsignposts
@Bob Loblaw:
When you can evade comparing the U.S. to China, get back to me on that. You started off comparing the countries, now you want to fine tune it to “tendencies.” Pathetic.
arguingwithsignposts
@maye:
You know who else detained people indefinitely?
(sorry, just had to get that out of my system)
seriously, maye and loblaw. If you want to argue that the policy is shit, then argue the policy is shit. Bringing in Stalinist U.S.S.R. or China, or Cambodia or whatever other country is just muddying the waters and – frankly – complete and utter bullshit.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@eemom: I think Glenn is too emotional, and he gets carried away. What’s her name is just a grifter trying to gin up anger for fund raising purposes.
maye
@eemom: then he shouldn’t have run for President making this campaign promise at every single stop along the way. He made closing Gitmo a signature campaign issue. If he’s going to reverse himself, I need a better explanation than I have received to date through public media.
Nick
@maye:
Also every US President.
Nick
@maye:
His effort was blocked by the people’s elected body. What more do you need?
junebug
@Bob Loblaw:
You know, I was caught up in the Greenwald epic mind blowing epic, until I realized that he wasn’t even politically aware until 2005.
That made me think.
His worst foe, hypatia, aka mona, used to lurk here. She ultimately became his research assistant.
When will people learn that Greenwald will complain about anyone and everyone BECAUSE HE CAN MAKE MONEY OFF OF IT?
The reason I love to read all of the main posters here is BECAUSE THEY HAVE REAL JOBS IN THE REAL WORLD AND ARE NOT LOOKING FOR MAKING MONEY OFF OF WHAT THEY POST.
Gees. GG is all about the money. If you got caught up in it, sorry.
Congress has made it impossible for Obama — not Bush — to close down Gitmo. Simple as that.
GG’s 1000000 word essays don’t mean crap.
Nick
@Djur:
honestly, not to sound like a neocon, but Glenn wouldn’t be happy until we release everyone accused of terrorism, washed and kissed their feet and paid them reparations. He’s too far gone for this debate.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@maye: does David Koch pay you by the post or on a hourly basis?
Bob Loblaw
@mantis:
Probably. That’s what banality of evil is all about. The bureaucratization of what would individually be considered unacceptable. Everybody becomes guilty so nobody individually can be.
If we are truly a democracy, then that means that final responsibility resides fully with the citizenry. Us. We all are responsible for letting indefinite detention be done in our name and to our benefit. There are no conscientious objectors. But that’s a big step. Would you be ready to live by it always?
Either way I don’t want to hear what a victim or noble martyr our leaders are.
maye
@arguingwithsignposts: It’s much more than just a shitty policy. Ethanol subsidies are shitty policy. Gitmo, the American gulag, undermines the fabric of the U.S. Constitution and the principles upon which the U.S. was founded. It is wrong, evil, degrading and unAmerican.
Anne Laurie
@General Stuck:
… Aaaaand now a bunch of self-styled “independents” who are pleased with the idea that the new EO proves that Obama is becoming a realist and giving up those namby-pamby peacenik tropes he used to scam the left-of-the-far-right Dems into voting for him, also too. There was a political calculation, the Obama administration has provided a stopgap “solution” that pleases the Reps. King (Pete & Stevie-IA) and gives the NRO morons the chance to take a victory lap. The dedicated fReichtards won’t stay pacified for very long, but maybe some rump of right-tending low-information voters will be a little less inclined to automatically vote against the Kenyaislamic Usurper in 2012. Yay, OUR SIDE!
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Anne Laurie: did you forget to take your meds again?
arguingwithsignposts
@maye: And who was responsible for Gitmo? And how can it be unwound within the fabric of the U.S. Constitution? I suppose that’s what we’re talking about here.
BTW – it somewhat irks me when people talk about the fabric of the constitution when the document included 3/5 persons and women, non-property owners didn’t have the franchise. We were never totally pure in any respect.
Bob Loblaw
@arguingwithsignposts:
I’ve never backed off, and you completely failed to understand the original point altogether.
Both China and the United States indefinitely detain people without charge. This is wrong. Therefore they are both wrong in this matter, and therefore both alike in this matter.
But that wasn’t the point. I was comparing Obama to Wen. If Barack Obama isn’t wholly responsible for joint Congressional actions (and he isn’t), then to what extent do we hold Wen responsible for joint Communist Party actions in his country? It’s not a hard question to answer honestly. It’s very hard to answer it consistently.
maye
@arguingwithsignposts: I’m not arguing for purity. I’m advocating rule of law.
Tim
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
k bad.
Could you elaborate? How do you know this?
Anne Laurie
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
Dude, you are like the mirror-world version of Rielle Hunter. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but apparently your family and friends (if any) haven’t been able to: YOU ARE NEVER GONNA BE PRESIDENT OBAMA’S FVCKBUDDY. Stalking the internets throwing abuse at anyone who dares to suggest, for whatever reason, that St. Barack may not have been conceived without sin and borne aloft by squadrons of angels in his every waking moment may keep the Secret Service from visiting you with another official notice-to-desist, but it’s not adding anything to this discussion or the general welfare.
arguingwithsignposts
@Bob Loblaw:
But why are you comparing Obama to Wen? Are they operating under the same governmental system? If not, then there is no comparison. Do we hold Tony Blair culpable in the same way we talk about GWB? I wouldn’t, because it’s a *different system*. Just as the N.K. system is different, or the Canadian system.
You brought up China. You might as well have brought up Cuba, or Venezuela, or any other country that does shit it shouldn’t be doing.
Just so we’re clear, I don’t know how to untangle a Gordian knot of epic proportions. Thankfully, I’m not staring at law books and constitutional opinions every day to try to figure this shit out. But – and this is important, loblaw – Obama didn’t create a mess, and he’s not a dictator. So fucking grow up and deal with the issues and stop comparing him to a Chinese Communist premiere. Is that too much to ask?
Nick
@Anne Laurie:
Welcome to American politics. What? You expected something different?
Tim
@Anne Laurie:
Thank you, Anne Laurie. Your righteous, concise take down of Mike Kay just elicited from me a spontaneous cybergasm.
Now pardon me while I clean up…
Nick
@maye:
what rule of law? It never existed.
Merkin
@Corner Stone: I have no fucking idea what Feingold was saying here. He didn’t want to end a bad Bush policy because it would solidify a bad Bush policy? What?
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Anne Laurie: don’t you have a cat photo to post?
eemom
@junebug:
Also, he barely ever even practiced law. And yet you’ll find hundreds of his fandroids clamoring about how what we REALLY we need to do is disband the Supreme Court, the Justice Department, and all 50 state Attorneys General and just appoint GG Lawyer of the World. That’ll fix it.
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
Your emo nihilism is the most consistently entertaining feature of this blog. Never change.
Anne Laurie
@Mike Kay:
I will be very sorry that people died, but it won’t change my opinion that Manning shouldn’t have been — shouldn’t be — held under conditions that UN observers are investigating as torture. Or that future Mannings, as well as all the other prisoners about whose conditions you care so much in the abstract, shouldn’t be denied basic human rights whenever The Authorities decide they’re sufficiently doubleplusungood to rank as people anymores. It’s not a zero-sum game, unlike your basement hex-board with the fancy laser-printed “Risk: Election 2012” graphics: I can deplore the (mooted, potential) death of innocents AND the (actual, RL) mistreatment of a given individual at the very same time.
Merkin
@cathyx:
all those times when he did wasn’t enough for you?
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
China’s not a democracy. The Standing Committee isn’t elected by the people separately from Wen. Why are using that comparison?
Anne Laurie
@Nick:
No, but somebody has to harsh the Obots’ mellow before they self-combust. You ever tried cleaning that residue off the blog walls?
Nick
@Bob Loblaw: and your arrogant naivatee is never missed.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Anne Laurie: how do you type with a straight jacket on? Do you use your nose or your toes?
I’m betting on toes when your posts are disjointed and nose when your posts are in word salad.
General Stuck
@Anne Laurie:
Then put up a Actblue, if Cole will let you, and get a primary challenger, otherwise you are sounding like an emo firebagging twit AL. I don’t give a shit about your tribal dances and outrage, not one shit.
The rest of us will just have to get by without disappointed leftists. It will be hard, but we will manage.
edit – and I see you’ve taken Tim under your wing, somebody sure needed to.
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
Because both inherited (through very different means) a fascist permastate and lacked the autonomy and the agency to reform as much as they might like, even though we never think about them in that way. And yet we make completely different moral judgments about the two of them.
Is the problem that I’m not chastened to call the US security policies something other than worryingly fascist? Is that what keeps tripping people up? Because if the word fascist is to mean anything, it has to be fairly applied always. And indefinite detention without charge, even of “terrorists,” is definitionally fascist.
Anne Laurie
P.S. Thanks, John, for putting up this post. I’ve been looking at the NYTimes article since last night, knowing that if I were the one to front-page, the self-styled Defenders of All Things Righteous would shriek twice as loud and shit up the post four times as fast. Besides I can’t top your formulation: Bunch of cowards led by spineless hacks, we are.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Anne Laurie:
That’s hilarious coming from someone who idealizes and idolizes LBJ. Your hero authorized the Phoenix Prg, which tortured and murdered Vietnamese civilians.
Stop bringing a knife to a gunfight. Kthxbi
Nick
@Anne Laurie:
Annie, the Obots are Obots for a reason…because they believe this is the best this country can offer and are not willing to destroy that over the pursuit of something that almost certainly isn’t reachable, often because it never was. You might think that makes us quitters and pathetic, we think it makes us realists. We all hear the endless barrage of stupid and evil everyday from our families, friends and coworkers. Some may chose to ignore it and believe it doesn’t represent the attitudes of most Americans. Some, like myself, accept that this is a country that by some miracle isn’t some military dictatorship.
FDR decided to put an entire ethnic group into internment camps, even while we fought a war against a regime that did exactly the same fucking thing. LBJ, Carter and Clinton sold chemical weapons to dictators who used them against their own people, even while we threatened Saddam Hussein for doing the same thing. I’m supposed to be irate that Barack Obama, after putting himself on the opposite side of popular opinion, decided the fight was lost and moved on? Hey, I’d like it if Gitmo closed, but my elected officials decided otherwise and Boy, they heard an earful from me over it, but it didn’t change anything. Their primary challengers were defeated and in some cases, even more odious politicians were elected.
If you have a problem with this, take it out with your fellow Americans, half of whom think torture is awesome. You really can’t fault Obama for trying to close Gitmo, which was probably a stupid thing to do in the first place in a nation where a debate erupts over whether or not a cop is justified beating the shit out of a kid or we award Emmys to show that glorifies torture.
General Stuck
@Anne Laurie:
do some catblogging AL, you’ll feel better.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
No Bob, I’ve repeatedly called America a fascist country and got mocked for it here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: Serious question for you and for those saying that this is a terrible result: Given that a Democratic Congress basically shivved Obama when he tried to move forward on trying these guys, what would you suggest be done? Someone suggested try or release (which means release). Someone else facetiously suggested putting them on a raft and sending a Predator drone after them. POW status has been suggested. The Bush administration shit the bed on this. Congress won’t give Obama a mop, a bucket, or access to the washing machine. How should he clean it up?
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Omnes Omnibus: oh c’mon! that’s easy. by using the bully pulpit of course.
Omnes Omnibus
The pet blogging cracks at Anne Laurie are cheap. People should be capable of better.
Angry Black Lady
@magurakurin: and there’s the added point that has been repeatedly stated that Obama did not imprison these people. he is left holding the bag. he can either drop the bag and let these assholes scurry out, or figure out a way to deal with them since Congress batted down what he wanted to do.
I really can’t understand how or why we’re having this discussion. Oh right — Janewaldian opportunism. GitmoManningGitmoManningGitmoManningPublishBookFindNewCause.
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: This. A million times.
Angry Black Lady
yes. this is pragmatism vs. idealogy. Ozombies are pragmatists. Firelickers are idealogues. And since we can’t stop arguing with each other for one fucking second (yeah, I’m guilty too) the Republicans and Teabillies are going to go about killing unions, privatizing education, and putting 14 year olds to work in sweatshops.
But yes, let’s continue to clutch our pearls about Bradley Fucking Manning.
ETA: And no, I’m not pro-torture. And no, I don’t have any thoughts one way or the other about Manning. He’s not a hero. He’s not the enemy. We don’t know what the hell he is aside from a guy who leaked shit he wasn’t supposed to leak, and got caught. He’s being held and abused or tortured or whatever based upon the reporting of FOUR FUCKING PEOPLE. These people repeatedly claim he’s being held in solitary confinement. You know what I think of when I hear that phrase? Hurricane. Being stuck in a hole and having your food shoved under a door. Is that what’s going on? No. So everything else that these people report lacks credibility because they are spinning facts. If you follow the Manning story, every link leads back to Hamsher, Greenwald, House, or Coombs. Now, I’m not saying I trust the military… far from it. But do I trust Manning’s lawyer (who, being a lawyer, is using the press to his advantage (not wrongfully so, necessarily), and three bloggers? No. But I’m sure that makes me a torture apologist or some shit. These four people are the only people keeping this story alive. WHY IS THAT?
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Omnes Omnibus: not as cheap as her calling me gay. Well, at least she didn’t call me a darky.
eemom
ok, I have a theory here.
See, just as we all suspected, John and Jane have secretly been lovers ever since she called him a misogynist and accused him of killing the public option. (A little kinky, to be sure, but to each their own, etc.) And lately she’s been after him to give her on a gig on this blog, so she can mount a Trojan-horse-like attack and conquer all the Obots on their home turf. And you know John can never say no to a lady. BUT, he knew we’d all give him no end of shit about it and he’d have to ban everybody and then who’d be left for Jane to conquer?
SO, he came up with a devilishly clever ploy. He sent the real Anne Laurie off on a cat-rescue mission, and sneaked Jane in under her FP spot, figgering that if the change was gradual enough, we’d never notice……
Nick
Yes and it ha to be said, with Republicans having declared war against what’s left of the working class, I couldn’t give shit about how a few dozen people at Gitmo, most of whom probably did take up arms against my country, are treated.
and yes the first two years of the Obama administration was well worth not going on fruitless prosecutions on torture that would’ve probably ended up with pardons by President Huckabee anyway.
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
But do you call Obama himself a fascist? Why or why not? That is what I’m trying to resolve here.
@Angry Black Lady:
Sigh. Those privileged fifth columnists striking out from their white, coastal, yuppie enclaves, always stirring up shit and bringing the working man down. Somebody should lock them up forever and throw away the key.
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
But do you call Obama himself a fascist? Why or why not? That is what I’m trying to resolve here.
@Angry Black Lady:
Sigh. Those privileged fifth columnists striking out from their white, coastal, yuppie enclaves, always stirring up shit and bringing the working man down. Somebody should lock them up forever and throw away the key.
Corner Stone
@Angry Black Lady:
I’m glad to hear this is now the Official Pragmatic Position ™.
magurakurin
@Nick:
this. sadly, so but this.
Angry Black Lady
@Bob Loblaw: Your comment makes no fucking sense. No need to post it twice.
Answer the question or shut it.
General Stuck
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think it was quite mild compared to her unhinged comment and accusations I was responding to . And the fact she has used my dog as a prop in previous attacks in political threads which pisses me off to no end.
Angry Black Lady
@Corner Stone: I refer you to comment 252.
Mnemosyne
@Bob Loblaw:
I think you’ve read Liberal Fascism one too many times if your claim is that China is definitionally a fascist country.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
No, because he actually tried to anti-fascist route and got swatted.
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
As Dr. King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And it is never the wrong time to do the right thing.
You can’t just stop caring about things because it’s easier. If the only people who give a shit about a couple dozen dudes in Cuba are their families and twelve lawyers in the ACLU, where do we go from there?
If you have to lose a part of yourself just to beat the Republicans back even a little, when does it stop being worth it?
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Angry Black Lady: it’s not even about the allegations of abuse. Before those allegations even surfaced, the usual suspects were running to his defense calling him a hero and his arrest an outrage.
I’m old enough to remember the old days when lefty bloggers, including you know who, objected to releasing classified information, such as valerie plame’s identity.
the allegations of abuse are just their way of waving a bloody shirt and raising money.
Angry Black Lady
@Omnes Omnibus: I asked this question 200 comments ago.
crickets so far.
If anyone can answer that or answer my question posed in 244, we might be able to solve the Great Gitmo Manning Affair once and for all. We can all sing kumbaya and smoke a peace pipe.
This shit is ridiculous.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
It doesn’t. this is politics. Dr. King wasn’t a politician. He wasn’t for a reason, because to be one he had to stop believing this.
I think he was wrong FWIW. It’s always the wrong time to do the right thing. The question is how much are you willing to risk to do it, and how much blowback will you receive? A lot of good doing the right thing will do if it only leads to worse consequences. I know idealists like to believe in happy endings, but that’s not the case. Sometimes doing the right thing doesn’t make the world sing kumbaya. Sometimes it creates even more wrongs.
Bob Loblaw
@Mnemosyne:
fascism and where it derives from:
A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
I like that definition. What about you? And it fits China to a fucking tee.
Corner Stone
@Angry Black Lady: You edited your post after I left my comment.
BWTS, I would ask you to please post where the military has refudiated any of the claims (Lt. Col.) Mr. Coombs has made regarding his client’s status?
In fact, they continually affirm that what is being said is accurate.
As to why only four visible figures are keeping this story alive I would suggest to you that this is factually inaccurate.
Bob Loblaw
@Angry Black Lady:
That’s probably because this thread hasn’t been about Manning, more or less.
It’s been about the Guantanamo detainees. Had you bothered to read it and incorporate yourself in it instead of being lazy and obnoxious, people might be willing to take you a little more seriously.
But since you already have the answer you like, I can’t imagine why anybody with any sense would bother.
@Nick:
So that’s probably about the saddest way to think possible. Why not just kill yourself then?
Merkin
@Bob Loblaw:
The same place we went after the Japanese were interred, or Debs was imprisoned, or after Kent State…
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Bob Loblaw: who are you, ronald reagan? Leave it to a white guy to call a black woman, lazy.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw: Is China a fascist country?
Yes.
Is America a fascist country?
Yes.
Whose worse? I say America because at least the Chinese people can’t be blamed for supporting and pushing its fascist government.
Corner Stone
@Corner Stone: Mark Kleiman, for one example, posted this on March 4th.
Bradley Manning, meet George Orwell
In which you’ll note that he includes two links, one to WaPo and one to NYT ~ which strangely do not seem to be written by Hamsher, GG, Coombs or House.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
Because I tried twice and failed and spent a good part of my 19th year in a hospital…but thanks for bringing that up again Bob.
Also because that’s life. It’s not fair and good doesn’t always triumph. You do the best you can and you be the best person you can be. All God asks is that you be a good person. What everyone else does, what they believe, is out of your hands. If you even try to influence them or change their minds, you’re just picking a scab.
Angry Black Lady
@Bob Loblaw: keep up, sparky. people have been talking about manning in this very thread and the question goes to the larger firebagger/obot issue that keeps squeezing out of the collective progressive asshole.
again, answer the question or stop talking at me.
Bob Loblaw
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
Still nonwhite. Still a stickler for intellectual rigor. Still bored with you.
@Merkin:
And that’s how this will end. Some President 40 years from now will issue a public apology. And history will have unkind things to say, and few will read them and fewer still will care. But the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, and it’s the responsibility of those on the ground to never forget that, while never being made complacent by that, and to never shut the fuck up about stuff that’s wrong and broken.
Bob Loblaw
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
Still nonwhite. Still a stickler for intellectual rigor. Still bored with you.
@Merkin:
And that’s how this will end. Some President 40 years from now will issue a public apology. And history will have unkind things to say, and few will read them and fewer still will care. But the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, and it’s the responsibility of those on the ground to never forget that, while never being made complacent by that, and to never shut the fuck up about stuff that’s wrong and broken.
General Stuck
@Bob Loblaw:
ABL was responding to Anne Laurie, who was going on about Manning in a previous comment, threads are not that restrictive for answering other commenters who go off topic. And Manning isn’t really very far off topic, if at all.
Now be a nice troll and tell ABL the truth, that you are an idiot and sorry, to include all the definitions of that word.
General Stuck
@Angry Black Lady:
This is art, and I am stealing it.
Angry Black Lady
@Corner Stone: The first line of that NYT article:
“A lawyer for Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking secret government files to WikiLeaks, has complained that his client was stripped and left naked in his cell for seven hours on Wednesday.”
The first line of the WaPo article:
“The lawyer for alleged government secrets leaker Bradley Manning is accusing military authorities of using punitive measures against Manning at the Marine Corps jail in Quantico, Va.”
Next.
Angry Black Lady
@General Stuck: what’s mine is yours!
Bob Loblaw
Christ on a crutch, this is like the third time I’ve double posted. I’m clearly incompetent and I apologize for that.
@Angry Black Lady:
If that’s all you want out of this world, then that’s what you’re going to get.
General Stuck
@Angry Black Lady:
Ha! :)
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Bob Loblaw:
‘a part of yourself’ Well, there’s a tell right there.
How about the working class the GOP is eager to eviscerate, Bob? Is it OK for them to suffer as long as your own white privileged ass can sleep warm at night knowing KSM can roam free like Elsa the Lioness?
Corner Stone
@Angry Black Lady: Goddamn, you’re so fucking sharp!
Give me a fucking break! Who the fuck do you think a reporter is going to interview about Bradley Manning but his godsdamned attorney?
AND THE MILITARY CONFIRMED THE ALLEGATIONS OF STRIPPING AND BEING LEFT NAKED!
When you complain about an attorney keeping his client’s case in the forefront does any part of your lobe twitch at all?
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob Loblaw:
Better men than you have done it.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Bob Loblaw: David Koch just called, he says you’re posting after midnight, and he’s not going to pay you for posting after your shift.
General Stuck
@Omnes Omnibus:
Shameless self promotion
Svensker
@eemom:
But none of that has to do with the substance of any arguments. It’s all ad homs, guilt by association, etc. Better arguing please than “he’s whiny and has lousy friends”.
Angry Black Lady
@Corner Stone: Jesus, but you’re dense.
My point is that you are screaming bloody murder when, as far as i know, NO ONE ELSE HAS EVEN TALKED TO MANNING. You don’t think Manning would want to talk to a reporter? Maybe he’s not allowed to, I don’t know. My point is that people are getting awfully riled up about shit they don’t really know anything about.
You’re cool with that? Getting all riled up to suit somebody else’s purposes?
And no, my frontal lobe doesn’t twitch because I wasn’t complaining, now was I?
To wit,
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: You do recognize the difference between complaining about something and pointing out that the Manning stories all do go back to the same small group of sources. This does not mean that they are incorrect; it just means that the stories hinge on the accuracy and veracity of those sources.
burnspbesq
@Guster:
He could have walked onto the floor of the Senate with an AK-47 and halted the vote, but the Senators he hosed down would have been replaced by means of special elections, so that’s not a sustainable solution.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: I post just one example of a blogger, who links to two of the most prominent papers in the nation, and doesn’t lead back to Salon, FDL or whatever House’s blog is. But that’s not good enough because the defendants attorney is doing his job and he’s quoted a couple times.
Not to mention the key fact, IMO, which is what Coombs is saying is being confirmed by the military.
If the attorney wasn’t screaming about this he should be disbarred.
eemom
@Svensker:
I wasn’t responding in that particular comment to the substance of any argument, but rather to another commenter’s observation about Greenwald’s background.
FFS, what are you, the 24-hour Greenwald Protection Patrol?
Svensker
@Angry Black Lady:
ABL, Dennis Kucinich has asked to see Manning and has not been allowed to do so. Manning is not going to be allowed to speak to reporters.
Corner Stone
@Angry Black Lady:
Talk about dense. Jeebus.
The military has confirmed these allegations. Repeatedly.
I’m not relying on some huckster’s bitchin and moanin. The people who have custody and command over the defendant have stipulated that the things Mr. Coombs is saying is true.
Corner Stone
@Angry Black Lady: Maybe you should cut back on your anal fixation with the progressive sphincter and try pulling your head out of your own ass for a while.
Svensker
@eemom:
Why? You attacking him 24 hours a day?
No, I just thought what you said was a cheap shot, without substance. If you were just snarking that’s fine, but as an argument it blew chewies.
But I like Glenn’s work, very much. He’s not perfect, but then I don’t know anyone who is. And he tries damn hard to keep the flag flying. I think he deserves kudos and support.
Jenny
@Svensker: Combs won’t allow his client to speak to reporters. Anything he says can be used against him. Even Johnnie Cochran didn’t let OJ speak to reporters before his trial.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: No one is saying the man isn’t doing his job. I am not fighting this particular fight though. My only question here is what action do the Obama critics on this issue think that Obama should take?
burnspbesq
@Rpx:
Because it’s unwinnable, yes?
Angry Black Lady
@Corner Stone: i’m not talking about the specific allegations of him being stripped at night. i’m talking about the general ZOMG! nature of the story that has been pushed for 6 months or however long. you think the NYT ran with the story in a vacuum? no. The FREE MANNING movement is responsible for their interest (i suspect) and that charge is being led by opportunists. that is my point.
it’s not that hard of a concept.
Mnemosyne
@Bob Loblaw:
Wow. You are deeply, embarrassingly ignorant about China, fascism, and world history. This is what happens when you actually think that Jonah Goldberg is a reasonable political commentator.
eemom
@Angry Black Lady:
don’t trouble yourself ABL. He’s started spluttering and hissing and snarling, which is what he always does when confronted by logic.
Shorter Cornered Rat:
The NYT and WaPo quoted RELIABLE OBJECTIVE SOURCES!
Oh, they quoted the guy’s lawyer?
Well…..it’s not his JOB to be objective!
Angry Black Lady
@Corner Stone: good one. how long did it take you to scrape that from the recesses of your brain? besides, it’s hard to cut back on my anal fixation when i’m interacting with you, innit?
Jenny
@Svensker: Give it up, he’s already married.
General Stuck
@burnspbesq:
Custer pretty much said the same thing, too bad it was the last thing he said.
eemom
@Svensker:
Go bash some public employee pensions, why dontcha? Glenn can take care of himself.
Bob Loblaw
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
Since this thread took a turn towards the personal, my real name is Ihsan. My parents are from Turkey. You, as an American, would not want to live there. And being a Turk blows being an Arab or a Persian out of the water, by the way.
If the United States wants to be better than the rest of the world, it has to be better than the rest of the world. President Obama is a reasonably decent guy. He doesn’t always do reasonably decent things. This is a problem. It is a problem that cannot, and must not, be ignored.
But unlike you, I don’t loathe my fellow Americans. I don’t see the right-wing winning out, try as they might. If a better, more honest choice is genuinely provided, then it will be taken up by the people, if not now then soon enough. I say this as a guy whose very existence right now along with millions of others is being held up as an existential threat to this country by an entire political party. The same party that seeks to impoverish a hundred million people just because they can.
They’re going to lose. And we’re going to win. And yes, compromises will have to be made. I just don’t think we’re making the right ones.
FlipYrWhig
@Anne Laurie:
Yes, it IS very brave, pathbreaking even, to post material criticizing Obama’s handling of civil liberties issues on Balloon Juice. What would be really a surprise is a post about Andrew Sullivan or Megan McArdle.
Jenny
@Bob Loblaw:
What’s with the racial superiority? You’ve got some big problems.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jenny: FFS I am the furthest thing from a Loblaw defender but way to entirely misread the dude’s statement. Wow.
Corner Stone
@Angry Black Lady: Ok, so you’re not talking about:
You’re talking about about the 6 months leading up to why these four people are keeping this story alive.
You are making the lil baby jeebus cry with your pathetic fucking wankery here.
How else did you think we would know about this? Manning sure as hell can’t tell us. Did you think the military was going to own up to it of its own volition?
Or maybe you’d prefer it if we didn’t know? I’m sure that’d make you more comfortable overall.
Jenny
@Omnes Omnibus: Debase yourself, be my guest, it’s a free country.
Jenny
@Corner Stone: How did “we” find out about this?
Bob Loblaw
@Mnemosyne:
This is the second time now where instead of having something intelligent to say, you just talked shit and brought up Jonah Goldberg. Whoever that is.
If you have some competing definition of fascism, you’re welcome to provide it. Though I can’t see why. It doesn’t really have much of a meaning anymore. It’s pretty much just a synonym for authoritarian (although, let me guess, it’s wrong to call China that too somehow?). I don’t think anybody particularly cares much for the nuances of Mussolini’s Italy compared to other oppressive regimes.
burnspbesq
@Tim:
So any deaths allegedly attributable to Manning’s actions would have to be weighed against the lives he saved.
Assuming the correctness of your assertion that Manning’s crimes saved lives (an easy assertion for you to make, but an impossible one to back up with anything remotely resembling data), it can be taken into account … in sentencing. The fact remains that Manning is guilty of serious crimes.
Corner Stone
@Jenbot: It was reported by Manning’s attorney and subsequently confirmed by the military.
burnspbesq
@maye:
Incorrect. Congress, which has the power to do so, has blocked implementation of every single thing Obama has tried to do about Guantanamo. The new executive order sucks, but it’s not a reversal, unless your thesaurus says “reverse” is synonymous with “accept the will of Congress.” Mine doesn’t.
Bob Loblaw
@Jenny:
Because the living conditions and comparative secularism and political freedom allowed in Turkey are substantially higher than those in neighboring Arab countries, Jenny. Jesus.
It is better to be an average Turkish citizen than an average Syrian. Or an average Egyptian. Or an average Iranian. All I’m saying.
Who wants to be the next person to call me a racist? We’re at two already and the night is still young…
Jenny
@Corner Stone: How did Manning’s attorney find out?
Angry Black Lady
@Corner Stone: oh for fuck’s sake. janewald have been pushing this story SINCE JUNE 2010. as i already said, i don’t mean “this story” as in this particular NYT/WaPo story. I mean the FREE MANNING story. again, i ask you, why is it that this movement is being led and kept alive by these four people?
either answer the question, say you can’t (and if you like, explain why it doesn’t matter to you that you can’t), or i’ll presume you’re being purposefully obtuse.
Jenny
@Bob Loblaw: It’s wrong of you to single people out. Someone else could easily say Turkey sucks when compared to Greece and Italy, but that would be equally wrong.
Whatevrs. Wallow in your muck.
Mnemosyne
@Bob Loblaw:
He’s the guy who says that fascism is a movement of the left. Congratulations, you have completely bought into his bullshit.
Sure — fascism is corporatism. It’s industry working hand in hand with the government to get the greatest possible benefit for themselves. You may be surprised to hear that there is a countervailing movement called “communism,” and that China is a country that follows these “communist” ideas rather than fascist ones.
Please explain how the Great Leap Forward was fascism. Protip: most fascist movements don’t use words like “collectivism.” You can look that one up, too. And, heck, why not find out who Marx and Lenin were while you’re at it, since you’ve clearly never heard of them, either?
So, in other words, you don’t actually know what fascism is and you don’t really care to use the word correctly because you find it convenient to push the meme started by the right wing that communism = fascism so therefore all fascist movements were started by liberals.
The fact that you don’t understand the word well enough to use it correctly doesn’t mean the definition magically changed to mean whatever you want it to.
eemom
yep, most Greeks WOULD say that.
Corner Stone
@Angry Black Lady: Talk about being obtuse.
What about being in the brig at Quantico in solitary confinement do you not understand? How many people do you think are allowed to visit him, or have the ability to?
And you started this by saying EVERY story was one of these hucksters keeping this story alive.
I responded that there are, in fact, several people across the blogosphere who write about this story and have for quite some time.
I even linked a recent article by a (fairly) prominent blogger who isn’t on your ignore list. He in turn linked to two prominent newspapers that OMG! used quotes by the defendant’s attorney! Damn him for keeping public opinion moving for his client! Damn him straight to hell!
I could link other blogs/articles but what’s the point? I’m sure they’d vaguely reference House visiting Manning and your panties would bunch uncontrollably.
Let’s say Hamsher is a straight up huckster. She’s in it for the fundraising schemes. And House? Seems to be the only person who’s taking time out of his life to have human contact with Manning. So there’s some notoriety there, and he gets a few choice quotes once in a while. I’m not sure that’s compensation for the time and effort he’s invested in his “friendship” with Manning. And personally if I were in SC, and someone visited me I would call them a friend no matter what their motives outside the wall.
As for GG, call him whatever you like. But he’s been writing consistently about all prisoner detainment/abuse for some years now, pre-Obama and mid-Obama. And yeah, he’s paid to get clicks. His conclusions haven’t changed on this topic AFAICT.
So, I have repeatedly answered your stupid fucking question and you have been to ridiculous to notice.
I’m sure you’ll tell me you weren’t talking about *this* you were really talking about *this*. Or some other stupid fucking dodge because you were and are wrong on the facts.
You are fixated on a couple people you don’t like but there are many more sources to read regarding this issue.
Bob Loblaw
@Mnemosyne:
Dear god. And you have the gall to lecture me on the word?
Do you know anything about China in the last twenty years? Like seriously, anything?
There is no government on the planet that works more closely with industrial producers than Beijing.
There’s more to this world than your crusade with some right-wing American author, I’m afraid. I don’t give a shit about your memes. Fascism is neither an exclusively right or left leaning ideology. It’s defined by the absence of democratic liberties and the dominance of hypernationalist narratives. That’s China right there.
@eemom:
Zing. Beat me to it. Fucking low blow bringing the Greeks up into this mess. You’re alright, eemom.
Corner Stone
@Jenbot: Mmm, maybe because his client told him and the military then confirmed it?
Are you next going to ask how the military knew about it?
Jenny
@Corner Stone:
That has never been confirmed. Not even his lawyer has said that.
Angry Black Lady
@Corner Stone:yeah, you’re being purposefully obtuse. you haven’t directly answered my question, although i gather from your blather that you can’t. you’re just arguing for why you believe these people and that’s fine, but there is no righteousness in your position.
as i pointed out to you above, that blogger you linked, linked the newspapers, which were reporting on what manning’s lawyer said. that’s fine too. but don’t pretend his lawyer is an objective source. he’s not. (and don’t pretend like i damned him on this thread. i did not.) and neither are house, greenwald, or hamsher.
that’s all folks.
your answer to my question is “i don’t know, but i’m okay with it.” it would have been easier if you’d said that an hour ago.
Jenny
@Corner Stone: thank you. thank you.
you earlier said,
Now, as you confirm, Manning is telling “us” through his attorney.
Thank you for confirming that Manning hasn’t been silenced.
Heh!
Angry Black Lady
@Jenny: no, but that’s how janewald have characterized it from the beginning, so we all think he’s in a hole (which is what the phrase “solitary confinement” calls to mind.)
Tim
@burnspbesq:
And how do you know this?
Corner Stone
@Jenbot: Are you addled?
Military airstrike video leak suspect in solitary confinement
If you go to this new thing called Google, and type in manning solitary it will return more than 10 pages of results. And guess what? On page 1 hardly any of them are icky GG or pure evil Hamsher.
Jenny
@Angry Black Lady: Exactly. He’s never been in the hole. He’s never been in solitary. He’s held in maximum security, but that’s no different than Aldrich Ames or Jonathan Pollard.
This has been a complete fabrication by the grifters, who in turn use it to raise money.
Corner Stone
@Angry Black Lady: I am laughing at you. What a clown.
Corner Stone
@Jenbot: WikiLeaks Suspect Faces Long Stay in Pretrial Solitary Confinement
“There, according to a military spokesperson, Manning “was routinely processed…The suspect is in solitary confinement and is being observed in accordance with normal operating procedures.”
I’m sorry if this isn’t good enough for you and Angry Clown Lady.
Jenny
@Corner Stone: There’s no quotes in that article. At best, that’s CNN characterization of the spokesperson’s comments. But that is not a direct statement. And as I said, his attorney has never said Manning is in solitary. If Manning is in solitary, why hasn’t his lawyer ever said so. He’s not shy.
eemom
this thread needs a prize.
Corner Stone
@Jenbot:PsySR’s Open Letter on PFC Bradley Manning’s Solitary Confinement
“Psychologists for Social Responsibility is deeply concerned about the pretrial detention conditions of alleged Wikileaks source PFC Bradley Manning, including solitary confinement for over five months, a forced lack of exercise, and possible sleep deprivation. It has been reported by his attorney and a visitor that Manning’s mental health is suffering from his treatment.”
burnspbesq
@Tim:
Umm … because he admitted it.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/wikileaks-chat/
Jenny
@Corner Stone: Yeah. Just what I though. There is no direct quote from Combs on the subject solitary.
PSR is a group FDL is working with. They’re not an objective organization. And even they don’t provide any quotes from Combs.
I’m sorry that you don’t seem to know the meaning of direct quote. A direct quote, in no way, shape, or form, includes characterizations or hearsay.
Look, I know firebaggers are retarded, but it’s simple, no direct quote means there is no evidence. You’re going to have to come to grips with being grifted. Now is the type to ask Jane for your money back.
And as I said, Combs is not a shy type, if Manning was in solitary, there would be reams of direct quotes.
Angry Black Lady
color me surprised.
**spoiler alert!**
it’s mocha brown.
Jenny
@Corner Stone: Don’t you get tired of being embarrassed?
Don’t you get tired of exposing your incompetence?
Does Jane put you up to this, or do you do it own your own?
[shakes head in disgust]
Mnemosyne
@Bob Loblaw:
Bob, if you don’t understand that there were two major and opposing international political movements in the 20th century, then 90 percent of American history is going to be completely incomprehensible to you.
You are not going to understand why we fought a
warpolice action in Korea and still have troops there today. You are not going to understand why we spent so much blood and capital in Vietnam, a country that had absolutely no economic or strategic value to the US. You are not going to understand why we’ve had sanctions against Cuba for 50 years (newsflash — it’s not because Castro is a fascist). You are not going to understand why we supported Pinochet but illegally financed contras in Nicaragua.You will not even understand why the US can’t have a universal healthcare system and why the word “soshulist” still makes Republicans come to attention. And all because you insist that fascism = authoritarianism = communism and it’s all the same anyway, so who really cares?
So your argument is that China has developed into a fascist country over the past 20 years, but everything was hunky-dory there before then? Or are you saying that they were fascist all along and all that talk about Marx and Lenin and Mao was cover for their corporatism that didn’t actually manifest itself until 20 years ago?
Again, the fact that you have manufactured your own personal definition of fascism that somehow manages to completely eliminate communism from the world history of the past 100 years doesn’t actually change the definition of the word or the history behind it. It just means you look like an idiot running around insisting that Stalin was a fascist.
Tim
@burnspbesq:
Umm … because he admitted it.
First of all, normally, in the U.S., we generally at least used to pretend to wait until the outcome of what we used to call a “trial” to determine if someone had actually committed a crime or not, regardless of what had or had not been put out in the public arena beforehand.
Simply because some government labels a specific act a “crime” in a legal sense does not make it a crime in a moral sense. People who opposed the British in the American Revolution were also committing crimes, you know.
My position is that regardless of what the full of shit u.s. governments calls what Manning is alleged to have done, I call it a brave and honorable act of true patriotism and decency.
You know…the British said George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, et al, had committed “crimes” too.
Tim
“angry clown lady.” I like it.
magurakurin
@Mnemosyne:
Jesus wept. Mnemosyne, I don’t think it is even worth bothering with Bob Loblaw here. He is stunningly and completely being willfully obtuse and ignorant. The mere suggest that nobody cares about the precise definition of fascism or its history, differences and interactions with communism has generations of history and political science professors spinning in their collective graves. Wow.
Mark S.
@Jenny:
God you’re a tedious dipshit. Here is Coombs’ blog. He talks a lot about Manning’s treatment. Here’s one example:
Mnemosyne
@magurakurin:
Idiots have been misusing the word since the 1960s and it really drives me up the wall.
I’m wondering if Bob is going to pick up on the implications of what I just said above, but I doubt it. Once he gets an idea fixed in his head, he just has to pound it into the dirt.
(ETA: added linky to be more clear what “above” meant)
Mark S.
Here’s another example:
Now he’s no longer allowed underwear.
Bob Loblaw
@Mnemosyne:
If we’ve been doing it wrong for fifty years then, maybe it’s time for academics to give up? Language evolves and lives and breathes. It isn’t static.
Fascism isn’t frozen in time. It isn’t just a historical movement. It can mean something new now to reflect changing conditions in global governance and structure. It’s a word with potency to describe this current reality, even if you think that makes it nothing more than an ignorant epithet.
Also, communism is a joke ideology. And post-Deng China isn’t even remotely Marxist, even at the local level, let alone nationally.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
Well, that was edifying. I’ve carefully weighed all the evidence, all the arguments and counter arguments. I think what we need to do is crystal clear. Wen Jiabao has got to go. I say we primary the motherfucker.
maye
@Bob Loblaw: this.
mclaren
@General Stuck:
The ostensible reason is that congress passed a law defunding Obama’s effort to do so. That meant that Obama did not have the money to shut down Gitmo and ship the innocent kidnap victims in Gitmo to the United States for civilian trials.
Lots of internet lawyers swell with pride like weenies on the grill when they cite this alleged reason why Obama hasn’t shut Gitmo down. “Obama doesn’t have the money!” they yelp. “Congress defunded him!”
This is of course obvious nonsense. Obama could have sequestered funds from any number of other programs, particularly military programs, merely by making a signing statement, or with an executive order. Various people would scream this is illegal and a violation of the costitution, but Reagan and Bush I and Bush II all used signing statements and fund sequestration routinely. People squawked, but in the end, everyone let it pass.
So it’s clear that Obama could have shut Gitmo down if he had really wanted to. Therefore we must cast about for another reason.
The proximate reason why Obama didn’t use fund sequestration or a signing statement or simply an executive order (“shift funding from the Diego Garcia base this month to shutting down Gitmo and curtail our long-range surveillance overflights for a month”) is that Obama is a coward who knows that the Republicans could use shutting down Gitmo has a club to beat him to death in the presidential election in 2012.
The secondary reason why Obama didn’t shut down Gitmo even though he clearly could have done it if he really wanted to, is that Obama knows full well (as everyone else who has studied the situation knows perfectly well) that almost all the kidnap victims held in Gitmo are innocent bystanders. They’re innocent cab drivers and goat herders and in many case 12-year-old kids, innocent of any wrongdoing, who had no connection with terrorists and were fraudulently sold to the U.S. army in Afghanistan by corrupt Afghan warlords who wanted to make big bucks quick when the U.S. offered a bounty for terrorists.
This means that all the civilian terror trials would fall apart because there is literally no evidence against essentially all the innocent kidnap victims in Gitmo. None. Zero. Nothing. Various hearsay allegations in each case get contradicted by evidence that the prisoners in Gitmo were not even in the part of the country the informants claim they were in at the same in question. This has been so thoroughly documented that the previous military lead prosecutor at Gitmo resigned in protest because the evidence against the Gitmo prisoners in the military commissions was such complete garbage.
There is no credible evidence against essentialy any of the prisoners in Gitmo. Therefore the judges will do what judges have been doing routinely since 2003 — they’ll throw out the charges against the Gitmo defendants and order ’em released. This has happened time and time again in U.S. terror trials. In almost every single case, the judge lectures the prosecutor that the evidence is junk, nothing but vague hearsay and statements gained from torture, all contradicted by a mountain of other evidence, and the judges dismiss most of the charges.
This has happened in every single terror trial. The so-called “dirty bomber” had no radioactive material and built no bomb and never seems to have done anything but talk trash about the U.S. All charges against him were thrown out except conspiracy, a garbage charge that means (basically) “talking tough.” If I whisper to you that I’d like to jaywalk, that’s felony conspiracy. That’s why, in almost every one of the terror trials, the defendants were convicted of nothing more than conspiracy. When the only charge against a terror defendant is conspiracy, that’s a dead giveaway that there’s no evidence and the whole trial is 100% horseshit.
So that’s the ultimate reason why Obama didn’t shut down Gitmo and order civilian trials. Actual civilian trials would wind up dismissing so many charges and releasing so many defendants that it would clear even to the dullest no-neck rube that the entire War on Terror is a scam.
And the War on Terror is just too useful to both parties. It’s a giant money machine. “We need more money to protect you from the daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaangerous terrorists!” The War on Terror is a marvelous propaganda tool — “Elect us and we’ll save you from the scaaaaaaaaary terrorist!” The War on Terror is a wonderful prestext for bashing the other party: the Demos scream that Bush violated the constitution, the Repubs shriek that the Demos will destroy America.
Tim
@mclaren:
Epic. Thank you.
mclaren
@Bob Loblaw:
Fascism is frozen in time. It died after the 1940s, when the entire fascist agenda became so irrevocably tainted by the Third Reich that after the 1940s, no regime could credibly claim to be fascist and be taken seriously.
At one time, believe it or not, fascism was a serious political philosophy. It’s worth discussing this a bit because history books don’t really go into it, at least the history books I was taught from in high school and college.
In 1914 Henry Ford invented the assembly line and in 1915 Lee deForest invented the audion (vacuum tube triode amplifier) and together these inventions kicked industrial production into high gear. Vacuum tubes became the basis for automated machinery with feedback and memory; you can built not only effective analog computers with vacuum tubes, you can build digital computers, so vacuum tubes kick auomation into high gear. The importance of the assembly line to industrial production is obvious and need not be discussed further.
Throughout the 1920s industrial production ramped up worldwide to the point where consumers wer deluged with more products than they could buy. Did you know that buying on credit started in the 1920s? Productivity raced so far ahead of the ability to consume that there was a massive glut of goods, manufacturers cut back production and fired workers, aggregate demand fell as more and more workers were thrown out of work, and the economy worldwide slid into a vicious downward spiral. The more workers got fired, the lower the buying power of the middle class, therefore the lower the profits of manufacturers, therefore the more workers got fired.
Add to this a lack of understanding of how to deal with recessions — government raised taxes and cut spending to cut deficits (sound familiar?) — plus side issues like a determination to stay on the goal standard, which prevented currencies from floating relative to one another, so that imports or exports couldn’t rescue economies from the death spiral, and you had the Great Depression.
The fascist ideology was essentially a response to the Great Depression, and to automated assembly-line capitalism itself. Remember that the assembly line and automation were in the 1920s and 1930s quite new. The fascists claimed that the essential problem behind modern society, which had led inevitably to the Great Depression and the collapse of society, was a lack of what Machiavelli called the violent virtues of the ancient world.
The fascists followed Machiavelli’s critique of the post-classical world, and went further. Fascist political philosophers believed that automation and modern industrial production had made the average citizen weak and undisciplined. Modern capitalism, the fascists argued, could only be sustained by selling citizens increasingly useless luxuries which sapped their vital powers and rendered them soft and cowardly. The fascists prescribed a solution: a strong state led by a Caesar-like leader which acted to organize the economy for useful production, and at the same time force citizens to exercise the civic virtues of ancient Rome and Greece. These virtues were the virtues of the ancient world, and were essentially anti-Christian: courage, stoicism, obediance, adherence to ancient traditions. The modern virtues of imagination, individuality, mercy, essentially all the virtues proposed by Jesus in the New Testament, were rejected by the fascists as a “weakening of the vital powers” and, as Edmund Burke put it, “a tendency to dissolve all the solids of the human constitution.” The fascist political philosophers essentially followed the lead of Nietzsche in rejecting the New Testament and holding up Machiavelli’s prince and his ilk as political ideals.
Fascism as a political philosophy probably seemed attractive in the 1920s and 1930s because it was not at that time clear that a modern automated industrial economy was sustainable. But by the late 1940s it had become obvious that the Great Depression was not due to any mythical softness of weakness in the average citizen due to the overproduction of luxury goods, it was due to mismanagement of the economy and a faulty arrangement of economic institutions. Once the gold standard was abandoned and FDIC insurance and social security was put in place, and once Keynesian deficit spending was recognized as a viable solution to recessions, the fascists’ economic critique evaporated.
The fascists’ social critique also fell apart when the supposedly “soft” and “weak” consumer-citizens of the U.S. and Britain kicked the asses of the allegedly hardened fascist New Men of Germany.
Fascism has not been able to recover its credibility as a political philosophy since the 1940s. It is today a fly in amber as a political philosophy, a curio from a time so remote to ours that it hold only the attraction of curiousity that people could have believed something that strange. The same, by the way, is true of communism since 1991. Today no one can be taken seriously if they espouse communism as a political philsophy. It has been too fatally and too permanently discredited to be revived.
Both fascism and communism belong to a period of history now remote from us and inaccessible. Just as no one today coudl seriously build a political movement based on cutting out the hearts of babies using obsidian knives, as the Aztecs did, no one today can build a political movement based on fascism or communism. All these political philosophies are as dead as doornails.
I’ve been pointing out that capitalism is now being discredited and will soon also belong to the remote and inaccessible past, but that’s a discussion for another time.
In any case, yes, fascism belongs to a specific time and place, and has no viability outside that time and place, just as the Know-Nothing movement or the pro-slavery movement in America is now dead and gone and can never be revived.
Master of Karate and Friendship
This thread is hilarious :)
eemom
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
ya got that right.
Master of Karate and Friendship
Some of you people are such suckers. “Too bad Obama can’t close the prison camp because of Congress!” Yeah, our military spends more than almost every other country on Earth, but there’s no money to close a military facility and move the people there to another facility unless Congress deigns to provide it.
And let’s be crystal clear about one thing: Obama is not a human rights crusader. Rather than keep people locked up without due process in Cuba forever, his plan was to keep them locked up without due process forever in Illinois. That was what he would have done even if Congress had given him whatever he wanted.
That’s because Barack Obama’s moral compass is fundamentally warped. He thinks he should be able to order the death of any American for any reason–or no reason. No trial, no oversight, just summary execution. He thinks selling marijuana is a worse crime than bilking people out of billions of dollars they have earned over lifetimes of hard work. He thinks people who blow the whistle about government misdeeds should be prosecuted but not the people committing those misdeeds.
And if you agree with him, or even excuse him, your moral compass is warped too.
“I think people are talking about Bradley Manning just to raise money!” First of all, thanks for recycling–recycling the exact sorts of things George W. Bush’s apologists used to say, that is. But that’s surely the best explanation, isn’t it? I mean, who could possibly be worried when they see the government denying a fellow citizen their basic civil rights? No one, that’s who! How could anyone be concerned about that??? Who cares about government over-stepping the boundaries of its power? None of use could possibly be affected by such a thing.
Corner Stone
@Master of Karate and Friendship: I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Is Angry Clown Lady wrong in some way to boldly state that ONLY FOUR PEOPLE give a shit about prisoner/detainee abuse and therefore those FOUR PEOPLE must all be motivated by greed?
I mean, don’t you find it odd that if you search the entire interwebs you can only find articles written by these bloggers? And reporters quoting only the defendant’s attorney?
I for one am pretty sure Angry Clown Lady has a valid and perfectly factually accurate take on this.
Angry Black Lady
@Corner Stone: that’s not what i said and you damn well know it, but thanks for playing.
it’s not my fault that you can’t follow logic.
El Cid
@mclaren: Actually, European fascism got its real start during and after WW1, far earlier than the Great Depression.
It was the turn of Italian movement leaders toward nationalism instead of internationalism, with both the racist nationalist components and a weird twist of Marx’s revolutionary historical timeline upon itself:
In Marxism, there will in industrial capitalism arise & intensify conflict between the classes of a particular society: i.e., proletarians versus capitalists.
In the Italian twist on fascism, since the people and groups of a nation were literally one giant organism, there could of course be no class conflict within one country.
Rather, class conflict would be between different nations who were themselves different classes.
Italy & Germany, for example, were proletarian nations (developing industrial capitalism later and less thoroughly than Britain & France) who had to struggle against and overthrow the bourgeois nations of Britain and Germany.
The bitterness by the violent and paramilitary right of both Italy and German in the wake of the war really built them quickly.
In Germany, a huge leap in the power of the right came when the Social Democratic government responded to leftist revolutions in German cities by calling upon the various bitter, revanchist right wing, ex-soldier movements frequently referred to as the freikorps.
The right wing bittermilitaries shut down the rebellions, and, there you go, legitimacy gained.
Mussolini’s “corporatism” in which each great social grouping formed an ‘organ’ of the body was portrayed philosophically as being much more than the merger of state and capital.
The government via the party was the head. The military was another vital organ, without which the organism could not survive. As was with the capitalists, as it was with labor.
From Mussolini’s “The Nature of Fascism“:
From a report in Time magazine from 1939:
Paula
Explains so much about GG’s writing.
Svensker
@eemom:
Go cheer some Israelis blowing up ungrateful Palestinian children, why dontcha?
General Stuck
Mclaren, you are a good example of what I was talking about earlier, that people with more information are not necessarily right about things.
No, you moron. The congress didn’t just de fund closing Gitmo and having trials in the US, they SPECIFIED that NO federal money can be spent by the president to do these things.
So unless Obama could raise enough private money, which there are likely laws against, to close Gitmo and bring the prisoner to US soil, then funds cannot be sequestered, or in any other way spent if federal funds.
eemom
@Svensker:
Truth hurts, huh?
False equivalence is a hypocrite’s best friend.
Angry Black Lady
you’re right eemom. this thread should get a prize.
Svensker
@eemom:
Just a little tat for tit, dear. No pain.
JMY
@bkny:
He doesn’t try? Where the hell have you been the last 2 years? He’s been trying to close Gitmo since he was inaugurated.
Syndicalist
And John Cole once again switches sides. I actually have more respect for the remaining Obots here!
@Bob Loblaw Actually, the privileged white yuppie liberals tend to be the biggest Obots of all. They’re financially cushioned from Democratic Party compromises.