I’m sure the Joe Biden “we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy” ad is in the works. But close behind will be the Barney Frank ad telling us that on the economy “the fundamentals are better than the psychology” (Phil Gramm smiles broadly), and advising us that of course we shouldn’t raise taxes — not yet:
MARIA BARTIROMO: So you agree: taxes should go up, then, on the top earners, even in this slow environment.
BARNEY FRANK: No. Not right away. I want to wait a year.
The latter points out just how extreme and unrealistic — or is it dishonest? — Barack Obama is being. Is he pushing a tax increase because he’s addicted to wealth distribution or just cynically playing on his base’s appetite for class warfare? Listen, if Barney Frank knows better, it is hard to imagine that Obama doesn’t. We are left wondering why he’s holding on to an ideologically extreme position.
There’s a bit of the surge phenomenon going on here. Well after it was obvious that the surge was working, Obama continued to deny reality and push for a timeline or even an immediate cut off of funding for the troops. Was he uninformed about the progress being made or afraid to offend his base?
This seems to be the pattern: Obama gets himself out on a policy limb (one that is invariably the farthest to the Left) and refuses to acknowledge error. Sometimes events bail him out (e.g. we wound up winning in Iraq despite the Democrats’ push for a retreat deadline), but sometimes he’s simply left with an intellectually indefensible position — on taxes or trade for example.
For a guy with a supposedly superior intellect and a magnificent temperament this is all quite puzzling. At the very least it suggests it won’t be easy to talk him out of his ultra-liberal positions.
And I’m sure you raised the same point about the hundreds of suspected terrorists released from GITMO by Bush, right? Some 60 of which ended up taking the field against us?
No? You never wrote about it or took Bush to task for it? Then this hypocrisy clearly is about hyperpartisan point scoring and little else.
Bush was wrong as well, regardless of who criticized him when (and there was plenty of questioning on the right)–the difference is we could see that as an unfortunate exception under the pressure of leftist hyperventilators such as yourself (why Bush buckled under to or even felt this pressure I never understood); with Obama, it looks like a sign of where his overall policy is headed.
Make sense? And, by the way, do you want them on the loose or not? And if not, do you think Bush was shredding the Constitution in keeping them captive?
Charles,
The fact that Obama is consciously repeating past mistakes makes it even more outrageous.
Make up your mind Obama apologists. Either you close gitmo or not. Your Messiah has no credibility.
#2
“And, by the way, do you want them on the loose or not?”
As far as this man goes, I don’t have the information to make the call, and I’m sure I know as much about the case as most of you do. It appears that the evidence against him was extracted by torture, both in Morrocco and while he was in US hands, which means that it is fairly useless. Clearly, there must Not be enough of a case against him, all things considered, to justify holding him. Moral questions aside, that is one of the raps against confessions gained through torture. They are unreliable. They also are generally inadmissible in court (military or otherwise). Lacking any other grounds, we have no cause to hold him.
Fortunately, most Americans have more spine than conservatives do. We are not willing to sacrifice human rights, or cede power to the government, in exchange for the illusion of security. We’d rather preserve the Constitution and take our chances with the terrorists.
My point still stands. When Republicans were deficit spending, Jennifer Rubin said nothing. Now that Democrats are doing it, she is a deficit hawk. When Bush was releasing hundreds of prisoners from GITMO, Jennifer Rubin said nothing. Obama releases one, and he is putting the nation in grave danger. It’s no wonder you’ve lost all credibility.
Our grounds for holding him is that he is a combatant (unlawful, but I don’t see that as the main point) in an organization that is waging war against the United States. The confession is irrelevant–I assume the interrogations were anyway aimed at extracting information, and the notion that harsh interrogation tactics lead to unreliable information is meaningless–the information obtained this way can then be checked through other means, and if it is false we are no worse off then we were before.
Those in the majority of courageous Americans in favor of including foreign terrorists under the rights granted by the Constitution will, anyway, be disappointed by Obama’s decision described in the new post superseding this one. Obama, I suppose, will still find a way to close Guantanamo (or keep saying he will do os) so at least he’ll let you keep a shred of your moral vanity.
Mohamed’s genitals were sliced up with razors, but I guess we need to hold onto him and keep doing that for some reason. You get off on some sick stuff, Jenny.
If he needs medical care, I have no objections to giving it to him and I doubt most of those protesting would either–the question is whether he should be let go to rejoin his fellows on the battlefield–and not, obviously, whether he should be tortured further, as you (#7) maliciously and mendaciously suggest.
Actually, there is nothing to suggest the evidence against Binyam Mohammed was extracted by torture. He claims he was tortured, in a Moroccan facility and in a US-run facility, and perhaps he was. However, he was demonstrated to have trained at the Al Farouq training camp in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where four of the 9/11 hijackers trained (along with John Walker Lindh, David Hicks, and the “Buffalo Six,” among numerous others). He was charged with complicity in the Jose Padilla “dirty bomb” plot, based on separate information, which is what kept him in detention for over four years. It is erroneous to assert that he has been held on evidence extracted by torture.
There goes Hurf again. Someday he will put up a post that doesn’t depend on slander.
Face it: Al-queda and its allies on the left have won the propaganda war on this issue; this terrorist like many others who have been similarly released, will likely be treated as a hero/victim, and then plot to kill again.
The may be winning, but what choice do we have but to keep fighting? 5,000 military families (plus the future victims of their attacks) might carry some propaganda value as well.
“As far as this man goes, I don’t have the information to make the call, and I’m sure I know as much about the case as most of you do. ”
So you don’t have the information to make the call means that those making the call are as stupid as you are. What a load of crap.
“Clearly, there must Not be enough of a case against him, all things considered, to justify holding him. ”
If you can’t make tha call due to a lack of information you perforce can’t write the above, becaus you don’t know. I’m no logician but I think the logicians call this form of argument bu****it.
“Moral questions aside, that is one of the raps against confessions gained through torture. ”
Again I’m no logician, but the logicians would call the above quote an example of sliding farther on bu****it than on gravel.
“Fortunately, most Americans have more spine than conservatives do.”
The above is just wishful thinking by the eunuch left.
Mohamed was also kidnapped by two headed wingnut illegal aliens who forced him to prostrate himself before a statue of Phyllis Schlafly while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in pig latin after which he was lectured on the Laffer Curve and force to listen to Wayne Newton CDs.
#14 does a pretty good caricature of Hurf–and it’s always tough to do that with someone who has already jumped the shark
I didn’t right that. Someone of you wingnuts is trying to make fun of me. It won’t work, because I don’t have a sense of humor. So there.
No need to worry, Hurf–as you could see, it was recognizable as a spoof. Barely.
Pay no attention to the #14 and #16 Hurfs. To paraphrase our glorious leader, Those are not the Hurfs I know. There is only one Hurf. And it is I.
Are we to start hearing from Mrs. Hurf soon?
Is it a matter of any import that Binyam was released into the custody of UK authorities, not dropped off in Times Square with a new suit and bus fare?
Anyone? anyone? Can the UK not deal with him as well as the US? Are their prisons easier to break out of or something?
Tragically no. Mrs. Hurf, actually it was Mrs. Hurf-Chomsky, was on the Rainbow Warrior when it was sunk by you Neocon fascists. I am however dating a rather cute woman named Lynette Squeaky from the Lower Upper Eastside. Unlike me, she isn’t interested in polite, rational and reasoned political discourse but rather favors the violent string-em-up -and-shoot-em approach to anyone who disagrees. I have to be careful though, an argument over who takes out the recyclables turned into a violent confrontation when she threatened to take razor blades to my nether regions. Following the dictate of the One, I was able to swiftly negotiate and I believe by his standards I won the negotiations. I have to take out the recyclables every time but I get to keep my nether regions. Had I taken the Bush-NeoCon approach I might be singing soprano if you know what I mean.
#20–I’ll give it a try–what grounds will the UK have to hold him? What is the British record of dealing with unlawful combatants? What will a Minister of Justice who just refused to let a Dutch Parliamentarian (Geert Wilders) who made a film critical of Islami into the country (because of threats of Muslim riots) do with this poor, miserable, anti-imperialist, tortured and unjustly impriosned by the Americans figure?
Actually I read that he is being released to house arrest in England, although they promise to keep him under “surveillance”. The issue is how a man like this is released at all. I understand the ideological and psychological motives behind being selectively outraged at the fact that he was allegedly tortured, a key competent in the al-Qaeda playbook by the way. But where is the moral indignation at a man voluntarily joining and training and plotting in an organization whose very reason for being is to violate the most basic laws of humanity? Is it worse that a man has dedicated his life unrepentantly to genocidal mass murder and that there is no sign that he will not return to the holy war the moment he is freed, or that he may have been mistreated in custody? What ultimately lies beneath the “torture narrative” is the profound need to believe that there is no enemy, that the war on terror is a matter of irrational fear (there is nothing so easy to project), and that those in US custody are not terrorists but innocent bystanders. That makes kneejerk opposition to the war a seemingly principled stand as opposed to a tremulous apologia for terrorists and fascists. It also makes it easy to reduce opposition to the war to empty slogans (“No Torture!”) without having to engage in the more difficult and potentially unsettling task of weighing traditional pieties against a much more complicated circumstance where old legalities may actually not apply.
It is maddening when anti-Gitmo harpies’ FIRST assessment of someone like Binyam Mohamed is that he is a “defendant,” rather than a combatant (lawful or otherwise).
The US Army did not go to Afghanistan or Iraq to arrest anybody. Mohamed was seized to keep him out of combat and to get information out of him, not to arraign him for a crime or to take statements to use against him in court.
No evidence other than what led to his capture as a combatant was necessary to hold him or to interrogate him, something strictly within the military’s purview unless there is GOOD reason to believe otherwise.
HIS self-serving claim that he was “tortured” is at best after the fact and certainly not good enough, in my opinion, to escape an unlawful combatant designation.
What does it matter, therefore, whether there was sufficient or insufficient evidence to try him in court? The soldiers who grabbed him were not policemen keeping an eye towards the legal grounds to convict him. It never entered their heads, I suspect. So all this solemn tut-tutting that torture should never be used because evidence so obtained won’t stand up in court is irrelevant.
Assuming he was “tortured” doesn’t give him a get-out-of-jail card after the fact of his being picked up in the first place.
Finally, the man in charge of his interrogation at Gitmo has testified that he was never treated harshly there. So who are we to believe?