<p>Common Dreams is a left wing rag, just as you pointed out about the reference I posted from the right. Enough said about it’s credibility.</p>
<p>No, I don’t have any illusions about power accruing to someone I don’t care for. I lived through the Clinton years. He was worse.</p>
<p>Anybody that thinks interogations in foreign countries were invented by this administration is naive in the extreme. Anybody that thinks that prison camps were invented in the last 6 years is even more naive. The simple fact is you chose to bury your collective heads in the sand as long as your man was in office, and now it serves your purpose to try and point fingers, because the country as a whole doesn’t buy your dogma. You can’t get a slate elected any other way and you know it.</p>
<p>Bandit, have fun: the only way Bush got re-elected was to wave 9/11 around like a voodoo doll and appeal to everyone’s fears as successfully as he’s appealed to yours. </p>
<p>Fortunately, the Teflon™ is wearing off and I think we’re heading into an interesting year.</p>
Really? Which policy? The war? Then I’m sure that if we go through the archives we can find all sorts of attacks by you against John Kerry when he was saying “If I knew then what I know now, I would have still voted to authorize the war”. </p>
<p>“We attack Bush beacause we hate the policy” … give me a freakin break! Got any other good jokes?</p>
<p>You know, even as a kid I used to enjoy teasing wasp nests and seeing what would happen. You folks are more entertaining than one of my mean beehives in late summer, but I think I’ve enjoyed enough of this particular thread. We will just have to agree to disagree. I guess that’s why we have elections. Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all Men. Yep, you too TD:)
Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight…</p>
<p>“The simple fact is you chose to bury your collective heads in the sand as long as your man was in office, and now it serves your purpose to try and point fingers, because the country as a whole doesn’t buy your dogma.”</p>
<p>I didn’t bury my head in the sand when my man was in office. I was often extremely critical of Clinton during his eight years in office, even though I voted for him twice. </p>
<p>And I’ve gone out of my way, on this board and elsewhere, to praise conservative Republicans who have put principal ahead of partisanship on these issues.</p>
<p>There are others who would do well to go back and read the Federalist Papers.</p>
<p>Bandit, Clinton was far superior to Bush on almost every conceivable dimension save his private morals with respect to women…hell, I’d pay for a subscription to the “Bimbo of the Month Club” for the White House if it would have kept Clinton otherwise out of trouble. I’d vote for him again…I may have to settle for voting for his wife instead. </p>
<p>FF, there are damn few policies of Bush’s that I don’t detest. But the one that’s criminal is the Iraq war. But you snap to attention and your heels click at the sound of “National Security.” So have a lot of people in history.</p>
<p>I don’t get it. What national security are we protecting? There were no WMDs in Iraq. Who is going to nuke us in the next 10 years?</p>
<p>Pakistan and North Korea have the bombs. Iran looks like they are trying to build a bomb.</p>
<p>I don’t know why we are spending 100 billion a year in Iraq when we could be spending that money over here, developing alternative energy sources that will crush the countries we don’t like, economically, so they can never afford to build a bomb.</p>
<p>“Bandit, Clinton was far superior to Bush on almost every conceivable dimension save his private morals with respect to women.”</p>
<p>Sorry, but I don’t buy that a man who knowingly kills half a million children and has his Secretary of State say “it was worth it” is in any way, shape, or form superior. It’s his public morality that I question, and, frankly, I wish he’d spent more time in bed. And if you don’t think it makes any difference in Iraq today, try to find 50 Iraqis, with brothers, sisters, sons or daughters, nieces or nephews killed by Clinton who want to fight for the Americans. It should be noted that in the very same poll cited by the Prez in his press conference this morning, 56% of Iraqis - including a majority of Shiites - believe that life was better under Saddam Hussein than it is today - the animosity runs very, very deep, and it’s obviously not all about George Bush.</p>
<p>(I don’t expect to vote for the wife of a mass murderer either. :()</p>
<p>Mini, the policy had tragic results. But it wasn’t an article of religious faith and there wasn’t anywhere near the same degree of self-righteous obstinancy attached to it.</p>
<p>A plague on both their houses. (But if I’m an Iraqi, I’ll take self-righteous obstinancy and 30,000 dead over the killing of a million people, virtually all civilians - half a million of them children - any day of the week.) You do realize that the number dead is greater than those killed in the Rwandan genocide. </p>
<p>Tragic results, or, looking at the response from my favorite Wellesley grad, murderous intentions?</p>
<p>Madeleine Albright has quibbled after the fact with the numerical premise of the question she answered (unhesitatingly) of whether the sanctions were worth it, but there is no doubt that an appalling number of innocent Iraqis died as a direct result of sanctions maintained by the US government during the Clinton administration.</p>
<p>Sanctions are often blithely offered as a more benign alternative to direct military action. In fact, they’re an extremely blunt instrument, the burden of which typically falls most crushingly on the poor and powerless.</p>
<p>What’s up with W’s sudden conciliatory tone?? I thought he didn’t care about polls? It’s almost a 180 turn! I’m surprised it hasn’t been noticed and commented on more…</p>
<p>Here is my proposal: The current Party in power should adapt three slogans: </p>
<p>[ol]
[li]War is Peace. Peace can only be achieved while we are at war with terrorism. [/li][li]Freedom is Slavery. Total freedom as outlined by the Constitution is in reality slavery as long as we’re under the threat of terrorism.[/li][li]Ignorance is Strength. If the Party’s strategies are leaked to the public, we lose our strength to fight terrorism.[/li][/ol]
For better safety in our society, I think that we need more Police Patrol helicopters darting among the roofs of our homes and businesses, allowing police to snoop in people’s windows. </p>
<p>And we need to invent something beyond a television: a “Telescreen” that can not only transmit governmental policies and tell us how to think, but it can also transmit back to the Thought Police (enabled by the Patriot Act) both sounds and pictures from inside our homes. After all, if I am not a terrorist, why would I fear what the government heard or saw of what I did.</p>
<p>What worries me the most is that the tax breaks and the phoney war were financed through borrowing from other countries. Yes in the past many countries have ‘invested’ in US, but they were small countries. No military threats and not much political agenda. Now one the largest lender is China. Mighty bankers use their clout to have it their way.</p>
<p>There are two very good opposing opinion pieces in the Washington Post today - one by George Will and the other by William Kristol. Josh Marshall also has a good analysis of Kristol’s column and a link to Kevin Drum who is theorizing why the FISA laws in place might not be sufficient to accomodate what the NSA is doing. </p>
<p>“Sanctions are often blithely offered as a more benign alternative to direct military action. In fact, they’re an extremely blunt instrument, the burden of which typically falls most crushingly on the poor and powerless.”</p>
<p>Ah, but they weren’t only sanctions, but a campaign of bombing specifically aimed at civilian infrastructure. He didn’t bomb army barracks, military installations, Presidential palaces, tank depots, airstrips. The aim was, combined with sanctions that presented the supply of clean water or simple antibiotics, to kill as many civilians as possible, and knowing in advance that the majority of them would be children.</p>
<p>One of the great ironies of the Clinton genocide (with 6 or 7 times as many people killed as killed by Saddam Hussein in 25 years), was that, had it worked, it would avoided one to the great pitfalls of the Bush invasion. The military, having overthrown Saddam Hussein, would have remained intact, fully armed, and prepared to repress any kind of Shiite uprising., likely as brutally as the supporters of Iran in the Iran-Iraq/(U.S.) war had been put down by Hussein himself.</p>
<p>here’s the problem I have (and I have not read a ton on this). </p>
<p>The admin’s defense is that they did not seek the warrant’s for the sake pf expediacy to deal with potentially dangerous siutations … which aligns with a lot of folks thoughts in this string.</p>
<p>However, as I understand the current law and the “secret warrant” process … following the law the calls can be tapped and then <em>after</em> the tapping the request can be made for the warrant … essentially, act as quickly as you need but be sure to inform the court of your actions.</p>
<p>So the question is … if the current law in no way slows down our response to threats what is a reasonable argument for by-passing the legal oversight that is the law?</p>
<p>Xiggi,
The administration’s “reasonable argument” for bypassing the legal oversight seems to be that the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, has a tougher legal standard that must be met to satisfy the court. The administration would have had to establish " ‘probable cause’ that the target is working for a ‘foreign power’ or is involved in terrorism" (Los Angeles Times, Dec. 20, 05). </p>
<p>Atty Gen. Gonzales told reporters yesterday that Bush’s 2002 order allowed for surveillance in cases where officials had “a reasonable basis” to conclude the people had terrorist links. These judgements were made not by a court but by NSA shift supervisors. </p>
<p>So, “reasonable basis” versus “probable cause.” And shift supervisor versus judge.</p>