cicerone imposter wrote:mm et al are good at projecting their simplistic ideas about history, and how that supports their argument. Betcha dollars to donuts it continues adnauseam into future threads.
I'll bet
you dollars to doughnuts your posting style, like a broken record, continues
ad nauseaum into future threads.
Poor ticomaya follows me around like a lap dog kissing my ass.
I didn't realize my little comment about Kerry and also my mention of comments about Democrats accusing Republicans being warmongers would stir the pot here so much, but hey, do we need to get the Swift Boat guys involved again to prove all the certifiable fabrications concerning Kerry's Vietnam record?
And yes, anyone that remembers the LBJ / Goldwater campaign would remember the little girl walking through the field of daisies, the next scene being a mushroom cloud, the bomb implied if you vote for Goldwater. LBJ won by a landslide, but I believe as do many others that the above mentioned tv ad was a turning point in the campaign, if there was one. LBJ, the slick and likely very crooked politician he was, managed to paint Goldwater as a warmonger. Historically, Democrats have done this repeatedly in nearly every election in my memory.
Republicans are just mean people. This has always been the message. Republicans like wars, they want to rob poor people, take away their social security, deprive them of decent medical care, and they are not in favor of spending more money on children. And of course they like to kill criminals through capital punishment. They also hate women because they are against abortion. And need I add they also habitually accuse Republicans of being racists and bigots. And of late of course, all Republicans are crooks, and Bush is a liar and a Nazi. Yes, the Democratic Party is such a wonderful party. I hope all you Democrats are made proud.
okie, You have it all wrong. The republicans want to establish discrimination in our constitution by prohibiting gays and lesbians to marry, Bush's illegal wiretaps and torture of prisoners, tax breaks for the rich while our country goes deeper into debt, restrict stem cell research to find cures for cancer and many other human disease, teach ID as part of science in our schools, starting a war on innuendos and lies about yellow cake and al qaida, failure to take care of our citizens in New Orleans after a natural disaster, pushing more middle class families into poverty while claiming improvement in our economy, and trying to influence the supreme court to save the life of one brain-damaged woman while the children in this country goes without health insurance.
The democrats are no better; they're a bunch of do-nothings.
cicerone imposter wrote:okie, You have it all wrong. The republicans want to establish discrimination in our constitution by prohibiting gays and lesbians to marry, Bush's illegal wiretaps and torture of prisoners, tax breaks for the rich while our country goes deeper into debt, restrict stem cell research to find cures for cancer and many other human disease, teach ID as part of science in our schools, starting a war on innuendos and lies about yellow cake and al qaida, failure to take care of our citizens in New Orleans after a natural disaster, pushing more middle class families into poverty while claiming improvement in our economy, and trying to influence the supreme court to save the life of one brain-damaged woman while the children in this country goes without health insurance.
The democrats are no better; they're a bunch of do-nothings.
cicerone, you illustrated my point beautifully. Yes, I forgot to mention Republicans want to make gays miserable, Bush does not care about the constitution, he wants to rip it up and write his own, Bush wants to wiretap every American illegally, not to find terrorists, but to invade our bedrooms probably. Bush also enjoys torturing prisoners, giving tax breaks to his rich friends, he loves lying to start wars, he doesn't care about the people in New Orleans, and he was more interested in one brain dead woman than all of the rest of us. I forgot to mention those things cicerone. Thanks for reminding me. All of what I said was totally accurate in terms of what Democrats apparently believe, so no wonder Bush is the most evil creep to ever live. Congratulations, cicerone for finally helping me see the light.
Now, what was it that Democrats want to do and who do they like? I forgot.
okie operates with the same mental gymnastics as Bush.
July 12, 2006
News Analysis
Terror and Presidential Power: Bush Takes a Step Back
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, July 11 ?- From the outset, President Bush declared that the battle against Al Qaeda would be a war like no other, fought by new rules against new enemies not entitled to the old protections afforded to either prisoners of war or criminal defendants.
But the White House acknowledgment on Tuesday that a key clause of the Geneva Conventions applies to Qaeda detainees, as a recent Supreme Court ruling affirmed, is only the latest step in the gradual erosion of the administration's aggressive legal stance.
The administration's initial position emerged in 2002 only after a fierce internal legal debate, and it has been revised in the face of international opinion, Congressional curbs and Supreme Court rulings. Two central ideas of the war on terror ?- that the president could fight it exclusively on the basis of his constitutional powers and that terrorist suspects had few, if any, rights ?- have been modified repeatedly.
Scholars debated the meaning of a Defense Department memo made public on Tuesday that declared that the clause in the Geneva Conventions, Common Article 3, "applies as a matter of law to the conflict with Al Qaeda."
Administration officials suggested that the memo only restated what was already policy ?- that detainees must be treated "humanely." But what was undeniable was that the president's executive order of Feb. 7, 2002, declared that Article 3 did not apply to Al Qaeda or to Taliban detainees, and that the newly released memo, written by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England, said it did.
After the Pentagon released the memo, the White House confirmed that it had formally withdrawn part of the 2002 order and accepted that Article 3 now applied to Qaeda detainees. That article prohibits "humiliating and degrading treatment" of prisoners and requires trials "affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
"This is an important course correction, and there are political ramifications to it," said Scott L. Silliman, an expert on the law of war at Duke University. Top defense officials "never really clarified when Geneva applied and when it didn't," he said.
Richard H. Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina, said the administration might have anticipated that it would have to adjust its policies, formed under immense pressure after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"They were going to reach as far as possible to prosecute this war, and if they were forced to scale back, they'd scale back," Mr. Kohn said. "Almost from the beginning, the administration has had to back away and fuzz up the issues."
If there has been a retreat, it may partly reflect a change in the perceived threat from Al Qaeda since the disorienting days after Sept. 11. As months, then years, passed without a new attack in the United States, the toughest measures seemed steadily less justifiable.
"As time passed, and no more buildings were blowing up, it was no longer an emergency, and the rules had to be renegotiated," said Dennis E. Showalter, a professor of history at Colorado College.
In retrospect, all the contradictions that have emerged in the last four years were present in embryo in the 2002 presidential order.
The order began by noting that "our recent extensive discussions" had shown that deciding how Geneva rules would apply to Qaeda prisoners "involves complex legal questions." It said that the conventions' protections did not apply to terror suspects, but also that "our values as a nation" nonetheless "call for us to treat detainees humanely, including those who are not legally entitled to such treatment."
In 2003, the administration decided that Article 3 would be applied to all prisoners captured in Iraq ?- even non-Iraqi members of Al Qaeda. But the May 2004 revelations of abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib showed that the policy had not always been followed, and in response, the Defense Department repeatedly whittled down the list of approved interrogation techniques.
In 2004, the Justice Department reversed course as well, formally withdrawing a 2002 opinion asserting that nothing short of treatment resulting in "organ failure" was banned as torture.
In late 2005, the administration was forced to accept legislation proposed by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, to ban "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of prisoners held by the United States anywhere in the world.
In the meantime, the Supreme Court was knocking down some of the administration's key assertions of presidential power in the battle against terror.
In Rasul v. Bush in 2004, the court ruled that American courts had the authority to decide whether foreign terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had been rightfully detained. And on June 29, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the court rejected the administration's rules for military commissions set up to try Guantánamo detainees, saying it had failed to seek Congressional approval and had fallen short of the standards set by law and the Geneva Conventions.
It was the Hamdan ruling that prompted Mr. England's memo. "It is my understanding," he wrote, that all current Defense Department rules were already in compliance with Article 3.
But Mr. England's wording suggested that after all the policy adjustment since 2002, he was not certain everyone was operating from the same playbook: "I request that you promptly review all relevant directives, regulations, policies, practices and procedures under your purview to ensure that they comply with the standard of Common Article 3."
Mr. England's uncertainty was not surprising, Mr. Silliman said. Mixed messages over exactly which rules applied where, and which Geneva protections were to be honored and which ignored, were at the root of prisoner abuse scandals from Guantánamo to Iraq to Afghanistan, he said.
"It's clear when you look at Abu Ghraib and everything else that there was a tremendous amount of confusion," Mr. Silliman said.
Even as legal experts parsed Mr. England's memo, confusion lingered. The American Civil Liberties Union welcomed the memo as "a first big step" toward ending "four years of lawlessness" on detainee issues. But it also noted that in testimony Tuesday, other administration officials suggested that Congress simply adopt as law the proposed military commissions in exactly the form that civil libertarians say falls far short of Article 3.
That skepticism was shared by Martin S. Lederman, a former Justice Department official now at the Georgetown University law school.
"The administration has fought tooth and nail for four years to say Common Article 3 does not apply to Al Qaeda," Mr. Lederman said. "Having lost that fight, I'm afraid they're now saying, ?'Never mind, we've been in compliance with Article 3 all along.' "
Cicerone, I get it. I get it. I get it.
Republicans are just mean people. Republicans like wars, they want to rob poor people, take away their social security, deprive them of decent medical care, and they are not in favor of spending more money on children. And of course they like to kill criminals through capital punishment. They also hate women because they are against abortion. And need I add Republicans are racists and bigots. And all Republicans are crooks, and Bush is a liar and a Nazi. Plus all the stuff you reminded me of cicerone. I don't know why I never understood it until now?
okie, You don't get it, you snickering fool!
cicerone, if you believe all of the stuff you read and say, why don't you believe me?
cicerone imposter wrote:Poor ticomaya follows me around like a lap dog kissing my ass.
Rubbery joints, that tico.
BernardR wrote:Kerry - A hero? Perhaps from time to time but he never showed his heroism more clearly than when he said in 2002:
"I WILL BE VOTING TO GIVE THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES THE AUTHORITY TO USE FORCE ---IF NECESSARY--TO DISARM SADDAM HUSSEIN BECAUSE I BELIEVE THAT A DEADLY ARSENAL OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION IN HIS HANDS IS A REAL AND GRAVE THREAT TO OUR SECURITY>"
You mean when Americans could still trust the president till we found out it was all a lie and now the country would be fools to believe anything the president says?
Amigo wrote:BernardR wrote:Kerry - A hero? Perhaps from time to time but he never showed his heroism more clearly than when he said in 2002:
"I WILL BE VOTING TO GIVE THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES THE AUTHORITY TO USE FORCE ---IF NECESSARY--TO DISARM SADDAM HUSSEIN BECAUSE I BELIEVE THAT A DEADLY ARSENAL OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION IN HIS HANDS IS A REAL AND GRAVE THREAT TO OUR SECURITY>"
You mean when Americans could still trust the president till we found out it was all a lie and now the country would be fools to believe anything the president says?
Yep, the CIA lied, the U.N. inspectors lied, the British, French, and Russian intelligence services lied, the Senate intelligence committee lied, Congress lied. I see it now. I think I know what must have happened. Bush's lie matters more, because Bush must have gone to Iraq in secret, found out there was no WMD, and came back and never told anybody else what he found out, that there was no WMD. Yes, Bush lied, but he should have known better. He made it all up. Just him. He was there. He was probably flown there in secret on one of those super fast airplanes, like his Dad was flown somewhere once.
You got it,Okie.and one thing I have never ever viewed on these threads.
The left wing liberals have never, to the best of my knowledge, ever claimed that the German, British and French Intelligence agencies DID NOT pass on information to us in 2001 and 2002 that Saddam did in reality have WMD's
Now, the left wing,Okie can claim that the Bush Administration rigged all of the fifteen US agencies to come down with a consensus that Saddam had indeed had WMD's in 2001 and 2002.
I know that unlike the left wing liberals who are afraid to read evidence that will upset their preudices, you will look at the material below which, of course, is documented.
from
Who is Lying About Iraq" by Norman Podhoretz
Yet even stipulating?-which I do only for the sake of argument?-that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the period leading up to the invasion, it defies all reason to think that Bush was lying when he asserted that they did. To lie means to say something one knows to be false. But it is as close to certainty as we can get that Bush believed in the truth of what he was saying about WMD in Iraq.
How indeed could it have been otherwise? George Tenet, his own CIA director, assured him that the case was "a slam dunk." This phrase would later become notorious, but in using it, Tenet had the backing of all fifteen agencies involved in gathering intelligence for the United States. In the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2002, where their collective views were summarized, one of the conclusions offered with "high confidence" was that
Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.
The intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel, and?-yes?-France all agreed with this judgment. And even Hans Blix?-who headed the UN team of inspectors trying to determine whether Saddam had complied with the demands of the Security Council that he get rid of the weapons of mass destruction he was known to have had in the past?-lent further credibility to the case in a report he issued only a few months before the invasion:
The discovery of a number of 122-mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. . . . They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.
Blix now claims that he was only being "cautious" here, but if, as he now also adds, the Bush administration "misled itself" in interpreting the evidence before it, he at the very least lent it a helping hand.
So, once again, did the British, the French, and the Germans, all of whom signed on in advance to Secretary of State Colin Powell's reading of the satellite photos he presented to the UN in the period leading up to the invasion. Powell himself and his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, now feel that this speech was the low point of his tenure as Secretary of State. But Wilkerson (in the process of a vicious attack on the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of Defense for getting us into Iraq) is forced to acknowledge that the Bush administration did not lack for company in interpreting the available evidence as it did:
I can't tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits, and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the UN on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can't. I've wrestled with it. [But] when you see a satellite photograph of all the signs of the chemical-weapons ASP?-Ammunition Supply Point?-with chemical weapons, and you match all those signs with your matrix on what should show a chemical ASP, and they're there, you have to conclude that it's a chemical ASP, especially when you see the next satellite photograph which shows the UN inspectors wheeling in their white vehicles with black markings on them to that same ASP, and everything is changed, everything is clean. . . . But George [Tenet] was convinced, John McLaughlin [Tenet's deputy] was convinced, that what we were presented [for Powell's UN speech] was accurate.
Going on to shoot down a widespread impression, Wilkerson informs us that even the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was convinced:
People say, well, INR dissented. That's a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That's all INR dissented on.
end of quote
Now, Okie, the far left wing liberals are so frightened of this evidence that they have never ever tried to rebut any of it. All they can feebly do is to attack the messenger--Norman Podhortez DESPITE THE FACT THAT HE DOCUMENTS HIS EVIDENCE WITH QUOTES WHICH ARE EASY TO FIND.
But the far left wing liberals will not shrink from presenting crap from twisted and lying souces like "The Nation"( formerly known as Pravda West) or Michael Moore and insist they are truthful!
BernardR wrote:
But the far left wing liberals will not shrink from presenting crap from twisted and lying souces like "The Nation"( formerly known as Pravda West) or Michael Moore and insist they are truthful!
But Bernard, Michael Moore's movie was a "documentary," don't you get it? Kind of like Al Gore's global warming documentary. All facts, well researched, and backed up 100%! Kind of like the old 60 minutes documentaries that Dan Rather used to put together. Great pieces of work, they were. Remember the exploding GMC pickup gas tanks? Remember the piece on George Bush's National Guard duty? Remember all the others on how evil corporations are poisoning us, fooling us, etc. Thank goodness for "documentaries," Bernard, because otherwise how would we ever find out the truth about things?
I know it doesn't matter to right wing-nuts, but here's a repeat of two paragrphs from revel's post:
SEPTEMBER, 2002 - DIA TELLS WHITE HOUSE NO EVIDENCE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS: "An unclassified excerpt of a 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency study on Iraq's chemical warfare program in which it stated that there is ?'no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has - or will - establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.'" The report also said, "A substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) actions." [Source: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 6/13/03; DIA report, 2002]
SEPTEMBER 20, 2002 - DEPT. OF ENERGY TELLS WHITE HOUSE OF NUKE DOUBTS: "Doubts about the quality of some of the evidence that the United States is using to make its case that Iraq is trying to build a nuclear bomb emerged Thursday. While National Security Adviser Condi Rice stated on 9/8 that imported aluminum tubes ?'are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs' a growing number of experts say that the administration has not presented convincing evidence that the tubes were intended for use in uranium enrichment rather than for artillery rocket tubes or other uses. Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright said he found significant disagreement among scientists within the Department of Energy and other agencies about the certainty of the evidence." [Source: UPI, 9/20/02]
Ticomaya wrote:I know it doesn't matter to leftwing-wackos, but the justification for the Iraq War involves more than just the threat of WMD.
Yeah...now it does.
But back before we went in....that was goddam near the only reason given.
So...why would the "weapons of mass destruction" not be the only one now....???
Hummmm....
...hummmmm....
...perhaps because we never found any of the weapons of mass destruction that lying sack of shyt used as an excuse to make himself a "war president."
Even someone as blind to Bush's dangerousness as Tico has to admit that the hyped-up WMD threat was the ONLY way Bushco could sell the war to congress, OR the American people. Or maybe I 'misunderestimate' the depth of his denial.
Frank, We must forgive ticomaya for having a brain deficiency; he's a lawyer after all! If he argues his cases in court like he does on a2k, he would be laughed out of court by the judge.
