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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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 Posted: Sun May 10, 2009 5:37 am Post subject: |
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The Obama administration has accused its predecessor of criminality. It then backed off in pious magnanimity, to spare the country more shame and agony.
That won't wash. President Obama is obliged to either announce that he understands and respects the actions the Bush/Cheney White House took to defend the nation after an unprecedented attack on America's crowded skyscrapers, or order a criminal investigation. He can't have it both ways, be both noble, and shoot insinuating spitballs.
Let a commission examine how the Bush White House compares with other administration meeting crises situations.
Consider the FDR administration, the first thing it did, faced by a foe an ocean away, was to put our entire Japanese American population, over 100,000 US citizens, behind barbed wire for the duration. Was the life of some of those people cut short, by suicide, crimes within the camps, by illness and a failure to receive proper help? You can bet such deaths numbered many more than a hundred.
Following December 7, thousands of other lawful US residents whose only crime was to hold Italian or German nationality were rounded up. (The British, in their panic, even jailed refugee Jews because they had German or Austrian passports).
Let us look at how Roosevelt and Churchill authorized the terror bombing of German and Japanese cities until the asphalt in the streets leaped into flame sucking the oxygen out of the basement shelters were hundreds of thousands of civilians were asphyxiated or crushed. General Curtis LeMay remarked, if we lose this war we will be tried for war crimes.
Let us also look at how General Eisenhower allowed tens of thousands (some claim many hundreds of thousands) of German POW to die from exposure and malnutrition, in our stockades in the bitter cold winter after the war's end. (How does a 30% death rate in some camps for Waffen SS prisoners compare with 27 homicides?)
Let a commission examine the legality of John F Kennedy ordering the Bay of Pigs invasion, of his involvement in the murder of General Qassam of Iraq and President Diem of South Vietnam, not to mention repeatedly sending assassins after Fidel Castro. And this would be the time to inquire in the Gulf of Tonkin incident and how it was manipulated by a Democratic president into sending half a million Americans into a debacle.
In 2005 the British papers publicized "The Cage", prisons cells in London where assorted Nazi prisoners had been tortured. We certainly thought torture worked back then, because those same facilities, and others at Bad Nenndorf, were subsequently used to squeeze revanchist Nazi and Cold War prisoners.
How about considering some of that, and lots more, while we expose the "criminality" of the Republican Bush administration as it wrestled with an attack that took more lives than Pearl Harbor and was unprecedented in the ominous way it threatened our people here at home in their everyday lives.
Keep your generosity Mr. President. Have the guts to either acknowledge that the actions Bush/Cheney took to protect our country was reasonable and creditable, or, if you don't think so, order an inquiry into how they met their responsibility for defending us against a nebulous enemy who was crashing crowded airliners into our cities. |
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RJjr
Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Location: Turning on a Lamp
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| Posted: Sun May 10, 2009 6:50 am Post subject: |
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| With the exception of the last 1 and 1/2 paragraphs, that article reads eerily similar to a bin Laden speech, the way he rehashes things like the bombings of Japan and Vietnam. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun May 10, 2009 7:37 am Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Meanwhile the people who actually came up with the policies and implemented them have not faced any accountability. Don't you start with them and work your way down? |
Is that how people like Nancy Pelosi discuss accountability for events such as the Chilean coup? Not being flip. Seriously. How do these people operate when it suits their purposes?
I think you are missing my point here, which is this: Pelosi and her coreligionists' way of going after people, citing justice, etc., stinks of simplistic selectivity and hypocrisy. And now is seems Pelosi does not even have clean hands in this, yet she continues the self-righteousness.
Please do not tell me you do not know where the W.-Bush-administration-era Pentagon and CIA's money came from, Kuros. I shall tell you in any case: it comes from the same people who approved covert budgets and granted covert funds to those American agencies who passed said funds to the Chilean truckers to help them sustain their strike, the one that very much helped bring S. Allende down... |
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ManintheMiddle
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 2:30 am Post subject: |
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Ya-ta Boy wrote:
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| This Pelosi stuff is a diversionary tactic to distract attention from the real issue. Who instigated the policies; were the policies illegal; how should the people who instigated whatever illegal policies be punished if there were crimes committed? |
Oh, really? So it's just a peripheral issue despite the fact that she's on the bandwagon calling for this witchhunt, eh? If she and other Democrats who were privy to the briefings didn't balk then they are no less culpable than the Bush administration lawyers, if your indictment is going to be consistent. But of course you'd rather focus on a partisan approach to the matter which only reminds us of how politically motivated this mess is.
I do so sorely hope that the next administration takes Obama's to task with as much sanctimony. And Holder should be the first held up to the light of scrutiny.
Pelosi is both a liar and a hypocrite, and not the brightest bulb in the box. She's not a Speaker who tries to rise above the fray; she's at best just another cheerleader minus the pom-poms. But she's from that generation of women who had to earn their stripes the hard way, so don't expect her to ever step down of her own volition.
As for the comment that the only Republicans left standing are Rush-types, you demonstrate yet again a large dose of wishful thinking. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 5:50 am Post subject: |
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Is that how people like Nancy Pelosi discuss accountability for events such as the Chilean coup? Not being flip. Seriously. How do these people operate when it suits their purposes?
I think you are missing my point here, which is this: Pelosi and her coreligionists' way of going after people, citing justice, etc., stinks of simplistic selectivity and hypocrisy. And now is seems Pelosi does not even have clean hands in this, yet she continues the self-righteousness. |
You're right. She's totally destroying whatever credibility she has. If torture is wrong, it is wrong when the home team (country, political party etc) does it. Not just when the opposition does it.
Isn't her approval rating in the teens?
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| Please do not tell me you do not know where the W.-Bush-administration-era Pentagon and CIA's money came from, Kuros. I shall tell you in any case: it comes from the same people who approved covert budgets and granted covert funds to those American agencies who passed said funds to the Chilean truckers to help them sustain their strike, the one that very much helped bring S. Allende down... |
Can you elaborate? |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 7:28 am Post subject: |
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Sure: United States House of Representatives, whose armed forces, intelligence, and appropriations committees receive full briefings every step of the way. See the memo L. Panetta produced in the OP.
"The power of the purse." They know very well what power they have.
Of course, some members will deny this. But the implications of that are this: they write blank checks to the military and intelligence establishment. Either they choose "not to know" or they are sickeningly negligent in their functions as a branch of government meant to aggressively check the executive.
In any case, they are in it just as deep as everyone else. Do not let Nancy Pelosi's sanctimonious style deceive you...
Last edited by Gopher on Tue May 12, 2009 9:19 am; edited 3 times in total |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 7:38 am Post subject: |
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| Do not let Nancy Pelosi's sanctimonious style deceive you... |
In truth, I don't know much about her. But my halfassed impression of her isn't positive.
So, the question is, are the Dems popular or is Obama popular? And if Obama fails to deliver meaningful change, what then happens to the popularity of the Dems, if I'm correct, and their popularity is their single degree of separation from Obama? Off topic, I know.
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| Of course, some members will deny this. But the implications of that are this: they write blank checks to the military and intelligence establishment. Either they choose "not to know" or they are sickeningly negligent in their functions as a branch of government meant to aggressively check the executive. |
Her position is just that she wasn't briefed, right? Then it follows that either she or the CIA is being dishonest, and if it is the CIA that is being dishonest, she was then at best totally failing at her job. Is that about right? |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 9:16 am Post subject: |
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CIA -- and this is Leon Panetta's CIA; he is a Clinton-era Democrat; Barack Obama appointed him, and the Senate confirmed him -- is not being dishonest, Mises. Besides CIA witnesses, other Congressmen attended those briefings with her.
This is an old game in Washington, I am afraid. Don't be left holding the bag. I strongly disagree with the way she is playing it, too. Holier-than-thou. This is exactly why CIA documents Congressional briefings in memoranda. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 12:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Do not let Nancy Pelosi's sanctimonious style deceive you... |
Okay.
BTW, do I strike you as the naive type? Cuz people IRL tell me I'm so cynical it hurts my credibility. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 2:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| But she didn't approve of anything, because she was only present for a briefing. |
However that may be, Kuros, this sounds much more like apologia than cynicism to me.
These briefings are specific, legal acts, and they carry many implications, especially when, upon receiving said briefings, Congress authorizes funds. And in any case there are levels of degree and nuance when apprehending "approval" of this or that in Washington.
I reject Ya-ta Boy's dismissing this story. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 6:27 am Post subject: |
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| WASHINGTON -- A source close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now confirms that Pelosi was told in February 2003 by her intelligence aide, Michael Sheehy, that waterboarding was actually used on CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah... |
CNN Reports |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 7:47 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
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| WASHINGTON -- A source close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now confirms that Pelosi was told in February 2003 by her intelligence aide, Michael Sheehy, that waterboarding was actually used on CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah... |
CNN Reports |
Pretty bad. But not nearly as bad as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Yoo, etc. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 7:53 am Post subject: |
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I do not defend them. And I especially disagree with everything that D. Rumsfeld did.
On the other hand, let she who has not sinned cast the first stone...
I regret your unwillingness to recognize the problem Nancy Pelosi presents here, Kuros. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 8:09 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
I do not defend them. And I especially disagree with everything that D. Rumsfeld did.
On the other hand, let she who has not sinned cast the first stone...
I regret your unwillingness to recognize the problem Nancy Pelosi presents here, Kuros. |
I called it pretty bad! *exasperated* |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 8:13 am Post subject: |
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But you ruined it with an irrelevant qualification. This thread deals, ultimately, with a single issue. It carries multiple implications. But it remains a single, narrow issue nonetheless: Nancy Pelosi's complicity in and support for W. Bush administration-era torture.
And the way I see it, she is clearly unfit to call for, let alone hold and supervise, investigations into the problem.
We need someone with clean hands, let alone avoiding some hysterical woman on a hyperpolitical witchhunt, to do this. |
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