Kara, that particular article is really good. It goes all different ways and leaves you wondering what is it trying to conclude and how I should ultimately react. I think you selected an excellent one and I want to follow any replies you get.
Can I ask you to give me your synapsis and opinion first or is that not fair? I won't let my kids do this to me.
dyslexia,
I haven't noticed my freedoms infringed here in the US. The charge that the Bush administration is scornful of freedom comes across as hyperbolic partisan rhetoric, the kind of stuff James Carville spouts.
From what I've seen, the bulk of the immigrants caught in the post-Sep 11 sweep had violated their visas. It seems likely that it disrupted cells planning violent acts against the US.
Many liberals seem to want to extend the civilian legal model everywhere, including wildly inappropriate domains such as war. It's just remarkable to me that some people think that the way for foreign enemies of the US to gain the Constitutional rights of US citizens is to kill Americans. The legal system used to prosecute domestic criminals is obviously ill-equipped to handle terrorists captured doing harm to America.
Tantor
"It's just remarkable to me that some people think that the way for foreign enemies of the US to gain the Constitutional rights of US citizens is to kill Americans."
"hyperbolic partisan rhetoric" if you ask me!
FYI, GWBush authorized the CIA to kill terrorists. What's next? c.i.
A quick comment to c.i. before I answer your question, BillW. I think the CIA has always been able to kill known terrorists; this news release is just propaganda, in my opinion, to keep the war drums beating and to keep the tension high.
BillW, I thought that article was outstanding. It was not polarized, as so many similar pieces have been; he was not coming down on one side or the other but reasoning from a clear-headed middle view. He pointed out the weaknesses in all views and actions.
What really grabbed me about the article was the awfulness of the first paragraph; the reader was thinking, Oh boy, I know where this opinion piece is going; this Bill Keller is all for a war on Iraq to remove that monster Saddam Hussein.
Suddenly, the writer, having got us trotting along behind him, darts off into the trees and leaves us behind. His head pops out on the right hand side of the forest, then disappears. We stop, momentarily baffled, then move ahead slowly. Woops, there he is on the left. Shall we follow him? Now he is behind us. Are we being manipulated by the writer? No, I do not think so. He just wants us to figure things out on our own, use our own reason, avoiding the emotionalism of the current discourse.
BillW,
That is a great quote in your signature.
Kara i believe it to be true that President Gerald Ford signed an executive order prohibiting the CIA from such activites following the uproar under Nixon of CIA authored killings in South America.
Kara, that was the feeling I got also. I felt the ride that Keller took me on let me see things I wanted to see, see things on the other side and then feel all this in another new way. It has changed my opinion in the overall; but, made me realize that the whole matter is convoluted and very complex. Thank you!
On the quote, Jefferson is a great man. I felt he was very insightful, if not able to do everything in his life he wishes he could have.
dyslexia, I remember when Ford did that.
I do not believe that we would ever be told how or why a terrorist died after one of the Company tracked him down and killed him. I think that Ford's edict is probably honored more in the breach than in the observance.
BillW, Keller made me see the whole issue in a new way, too.
Kara, I agree with you Keller story assessment.
Re: dyslexia's comment - If I remember correctly, it only says that there can not be an assassination attempt against a leader of a country. There was talk about getting Congress to over-rule that law. I don't know why it hasn't under current climate?
As an executive order, it can be reversed by the current president. No one in congress has any political motivation to overturn such an order.
I'm not sure that was an executive order. Does anyone remember for sure?
I don't remember, but think I heard that years after the fact.
Amid a wave of public revulsion at so-called "covert" operations directed by the CIA against foreign leaders deemed threatening to the United States, President Gerald Ford issued Executive Order 12333 in 1976.
For over 25 years it has decreed that "no person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination".
President Ford was reacting to Senate and House committee reports both concluding that the CIA had become a "rogue elephant" crushing foreign citizens under foot in its bid to win the Cold War.
Thanks dyslexia, I can't imagine how that thing has stayed in place through Reagan, 41 and un43.
There needs to be more media coverage world-wide of Saddam's atrocities. I'm sure many doves will change their minds about Bush's plan for war with Iraq if they knew the facts. Why hasn't this information been shared more readily? It makes me wonder. c.i.
Should we now become the world's policeman, then, c.i.?
