Why do you still support Bush?

People like OmSigDAVID demonize all other ideologies. What is true, what is a lie, what is right and what is wrong have no role in their philosophies. It's their kind of fascism (there all the same).

If it's true that Hitler exploited socialism to his own ends and that it had little to do with actual Socialism being a good and fair political system this is not their concern nor is democracy. Their concern is maintaining demonization so that any other ideas they don't like can quickly be declared "fascist", "socialist", "Commie".

It is absolutely necessary these words remain associated in the minds of people as evil because deception not truth is their means.

That's - sorry - contrary to what original sources and documents say.

Could you give me your primary sources, please?

(I mean, I've stayed a couple of weeks in various archives and got wet eyes looking through thousands of microfiches and old newspapers/documents - I can surely habe overlooked some material as other historians could have done, too.)

Walter, You are correct in your assessment of history in most cases (like 99.9 percent), so don't fret the small stuff! When I read your post, I have great confience in what you say.

Hi c.i.! Thanks :wink:

And there's still the question, when the Socialists got a dictatorship in "democratic", communist or monarchist Russia/USSR ...

David, I absolutely agree that the US Constitution is a social contract wherein the government derives its legitimacy from the People. When government exceeds the granted authority it is an usurpation more criminal than holding up the local liquor store. Government is constrained by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Your citation of Casey is directly on point, and is only one of many USSC decisions that constrain the reach of the Federal government. The weight of stare decisis is so great that I can't imagine a radical departure from the principle in our lifetime, or the life times of our grandchildren.

It is my contention that the Federal government is legitimate and conforms to the Constitution at this time. By "keeping faith", I mean faith in the Constitution and in those Federal policies that conform to the Constitution. What is, or is not Constitutionally correct is not for you or I do decide, but it is the primary function of the Supreme Court (Thank you, Justice Marshall). The Court may from time to time make judgments that are not consistent with the needs of the time, or the Will of the People, but they are virtually always sound interpretations of the Constitution. Interpretations of any law or contract vary, that's the very stuff of Anglo-American law. With the passage of time that which was once novel becomes commonly accepted, and laws will be interpreted in a different light. The Court does overturn past decisions, sometimes in radical ways. So long as the Supreme Court is on the job, both the legislative and Executive branches are constrained … and the system is capable of righting itself. Let it. That's what I mean by saying "keep the faith".

To do otherwise is take a great and unnecessary risk of burning the village down to save it. We should as responsible citizens be very wary of moves to amend the Constitution, especially if the amendment smacks of special interests … of any sort. Prohibition was well-intentioned, but as a Constitutional Amendment it was a total disaster ("Thank you, Volstead", Al Capone). If any Amendment is proposed, let it be during times of peace and tranquility so that calm minds will not be hurried into potentially dangerous shoals.

Micro-surveillance reminds of George Orwell's nightmare world of Big Brother and "1984", a cautionary tale that seems terribly apt today. However, 2006 is a different world than 1948. It is true that today someone may be watching almost any public behavior, by anyone, at any time. No traffic officer is needed to give you a ticket for busting a red light, and every purchase at the local store is recorded on tape and on sales receipts. Our whole lives are available in the data banks of innumerable organizations at the stroke of a few keys. Law enforcement links make it hard for a person to escape to "Texas" and start with a clean slate. The Federal government has the capability to monitor every electronic signal on the face of the earth. That is worrisome, especially if you are the sort of person who easily believes in conspiracies.

The loss of personal privacy isn't the fault of the Federal government, indeed, most of the intrusions into our lives have been made by the so-called private sector. The government we have some control over, but private intruders may be more dangerous and more difficult to control. As a practical matter the Federal government is constrained in its oversight into individuals lives by the sheer quantity of the data collection take. There is so much data that its almost impossible to construct reliable and useful information from it. The Federal government is forced to search for key words in an avalanche of signals, most of which are probably completely innocent and of no use whatever. The second technique is to narrowly focus on individuals of interest as a means of conserving limited assets. Who are individuals of interest? One of several approaches is to do link-analysis where one starts with a known "bad guy" and slowly do a workup of every contact that person has with the world. Each contact then becomes the center of another ring of contacts. This process may extend outward from the initial point through as many as a half dozen linkages. Most are probably not even know that they are in contact with a "bad guy", but they have to be checked out. Analysts look for contacts between secondary and tertiary individuals. Out of the effort focus is directed to the individuals most likely to have connections of interest. The whole process is time consuming and expensive, so its used almost exclusively for tracking major criminal/terrorist communications. Technology also makes government surveillance difficult, because its so easy to obtain cheap anonymous "throw-away" telephones that may only be used once. This makes it almost impossible to effectively conduct "warranted taps" because no one knows which telephone a targeted individual will use. In any case, NSA taps aren't ever going to wind up in a court of law used to convict a private U.S. citizen of cheating on their income taxes.

"Is it too late already (to prevent the Federal government from "usurping" individual liberty by invading personal privacy in communications)? Is the genie out of the bottle? Are we doomed to be the ancestors of the Borg?

Yes, I think the genie has been out of the bottle since 1940 at least. Once a benefit has been granted, its almost impossible to rescind. Most Americans regard the enlarged role of the Federal government as a "good thing", and will fight tooth and nail to prevent any cuts in the entitlements programs that make up something like 70% of the total Federal budget. Cutting government waste and reducing the military to a skeleton would not be sufficient to return the nation to what most conservatives would regard as a fiscally responsible budget. About half of the American public would like the Federal budget for social projects doubled, or tripled. These are folks who welcome Federal controls as a means of legislating social justice, and the loss of individual liberties doesn't signify. There is a whole segment of the population (in both Parties) that would scrap due process in a heartbeat because they are convinced that their hobby horse is the only one that should be allowed on the racetrack. That isn't new, and every generation before us has had to deal with the same bunch of extremists.

Are we doomed to become the Borg? Personally, I hope not. Time will tell whether the American People cherish their traditional Constitutional liberties more than the benefits of turning over their lives to a large central government. The American People might someday voluntarily abandon Constitution as a result of a new Constitutional Convention. That is provided for, and it is one of those Rights reserved to the People. "What the People grant, they can take away." That, in my view would be a foolish and as responsible citizens we should guard the Constitution with all our lives and treasures if need be.

We aren't even close to the red-line yet. The American People make an almost infinite number of little decisions and choices every day, and in aggregate they amount to the Will of the People. The system was in much more danger during the Civil War, WWI, and the Great Depression/Dust Bowl than it is today. Americans by and large are leery of large changes in radical directions. They want the world to remain a safe place where they and their families can enjoy their property with minimal interference. Traditional values remain important to most Americans. Respect and love of the flag, the Constitution and the country is still important to most of us. Our love for the idea of the nuclear family remains, and any perceived threat to it makes a lot of people nervous. I look out over America and I don't see the overwhelming wave of cynicism that the left tells us exists. I don't believe that the system has failed to work, nor will it in the near term future.

"I have usually been an optimist; such is my nature, but I have become a nervous optimist." …. Nice tagline.

I'm sorry to learn that you are suffering health problems. Allowances are made. Perhaps it would be easier for you to compose your posts in Word, and then paste them into the thread window. Composing/editing in this A2K system requires the patience of Job, and the spellcheck is only of minimal value here. Oh well....

What sort of law do you, or did you practice? This site has a fair number of folks trained in the Law ... and that is sometimes scary.

Ashman, Any branch of government that does things without the knowledge and consent of the other branches of government is dangerous.

Faith alone does not guarantee that our constitutional and bill of rights are upheld.

I wonder how you can have faith in this administration that holds prisoners at Gitmo without any legal representation.

1. They aren't citizens of the United States.
2. They were captured during a military operations against Al Queda.
3. The prisoners in most cases were armed and engaged in killing uniformed American soldiers when captured.
4. Many were captured in Afghanistan, though they are citizens of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Yemen, and other States know to support radical Islamic terrorism against Israel and the West.
5. The prisoners are NOT prisoners of war, because they were not part of any recognized military unit.

What would you have done with this bunch of murderous land pirates?

They aren't entitled to the legal protections afforded the citizens they are sworn to murder. What U.S. Law did they break, and did they break those laws inside the United States? Should we overburden our Justice system by trying a few thousand wannabe martyrs hungry for publicity? If convicted, are you willing to integrate these SOBs into the general prison population where they can do more harm?

They voluntarily engaged in killing American soldiers in a combat zone. Yet they are not soldiers, or even freedom fighters. What entitles mass murderers who kill for citing religion as their motives to be treated in the same manner as honorable soldiers who are bound by the usages of war?

Where should they be repatriated to? To Afghanistan where they terrorized the local population? To their home countries where they would be temporary folk heros before joining up again with Al Queda forces in Iraq?

They are imprisoned, but to cry over their fate is nonsense. They are afforded three meals a day that meets their religious criteria. They are given better medical treatment than some American citizens. Their religion is unmolested. Most of these are dangerous men, and security rightfully is tight. The need to gather intelligence justifies placing them in some discomfort ... but that doesn't amount to conventional definitions of torture. The military is, I understand, releasing numbers of detainees. We can only hope that those released will not be building and exploding bombs to kill our soldiers, or our citizens.

There are almost certainly some who've been detained unjustly, and they will be the first released. Some will be released as double agents as we try to rebuild our HUMINT networks in the region. Some will be released in the hopes they will lead us to other bad actors. Some will probably kill more Americans, and then if the media discovers it the military and administration will be blamed for releasing monsters back into the world.

I was referring to Hitler 's national socialists and to Stalin 's international socialists.

Ashman, You call them "... this bunch of murderous land pirates?" How do you know? Do you have first hand information on each prisoner being held?

They have been taken away from all legal and human rights from those prisoners. This is not the America I love nor approve of. People like you make me ill.

Before I get into this,I need to ask you a question...

Do you believe the prisoners at Gitmo are covered under the Geneva convention,or the US Constitution?

America does not need your approval.

As an American citizen,
I will defer to the judgment of the military
who arrested them. To release them is to play Russian Roulette
with American security.

RIGHTS-US:
Gitmo Releases Suggest Numerous Mistakes
William Fisher

NEW YORK, May 2 (IPS) - News that the Pentagon will soon release about a third of the prisoners still detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has prompted the U.S. media and many in the blogosphere to recall Defence Secretary Rumsfeld's 2002 statement referring to Guantanamo prisoners as "the worst of the worst".

And as recently as June 2005, he said, "If you think of the people down there, these are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They're terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, [Osama bin Laden's] bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker."

But the Pentagon's announcement that it would soon release 141 prisoners -- or about a third of those still detained at Guantanamo -- comes despite continuing stubborn defences of the facility and the way interrogators have determined the status of detainees.

This is not the first time prisoners have been released from the facility. Of the approximately 760 prisoners brought to Guantanamo since 2002, the military has previously released 180 and transferred 76 to the custody of other countries.

The Pentagon says the prisoners to be released no longer represent a threat to the U.S. and have no further intelligence value.

But critics of the George W. Bush administration's detention policies assert that the military does not have enough evidence on these people to try them, even before its own tribunals, which have a much lower threshold of evidence than U.S. courts.

Gabor Rona, international legal director for Human Rights First, told IPS, "If most of these guys are not al Qaeda, i.e., are vanilla-flavoured civilians or mere Taliban foot soldiers, then it gives the lie to the single mantra that the administration has left when attempting to defend itself against allegations of abuse in Gitmo: that the 'terrorists' are trained to make false allegations of abuse."

The Los Angeles Times, which reported the latest prisoner release story, said that charges are pending against about two dozen of the remaining prisoners. But it said the chief prosecutor left unclear why the rest face neither imminent freedom nor a day in court after as many as four years in custody.

Charges have been brought against only 10 of the approximately 490 alleged "enemy combatants" currently detained at the facility. None has been charged with a capital offence.

The U.S. plans to file charges against more Guantanamo detainees and will seek the death penalty in some cases, according to the top military prosecutor at the military base. But Air Force Col. Morris Davis declined to disclose details about plans to charge about two dozen detainees in addition to the 10 already charged.

The decision to release 141 detainees is the result of a yearlong review of their cases in which interrogators also determined that they could provide no further intelligence.

Since the U.S. started sending prisoners to Guantanamo in 2002, there have been increasingly shrill allegations from a variety of international legal and human rights groups that few of those being held were "terrorists". The Pentagon's own files suggest that the military made numerous mistakes in sending people to Guantanamo and detaining them there without charges or trials.

Many of these Pentagon "mistakes" have been held for close to five years. Some were not captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan, but kidnapped off the streets of Europe and various locations in the Middle East. Many were "sold" to U.S. authorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan for bounties. Many others were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The fiercely nonpartisan National Journal magazine has reported that, "Notwithstanding Rumsfeld's description, the majority of (Guantanamo prisoners) was not caught by American soldiers on the battlefield. They came into American custody from third parties, mostly from Pakistan, some after targeted raids there, most after a dragnet for Arabs after 9/11."

Nevertheless, all were categorised as "enemy combatants" with ties to the Taliban, al Qaeda, or other groups that support terrorism.

While observers believe the Pentagon may well have evidence that some of the prisoners at Guantanamo were al Qaeda operatives out to kill as many U.S. citizens as possible, in many other cases, the "evidence" is based on second, third and fourth-hand hearsay. In still others, it is clear that admissions of guilt have been obtained through cruel and inhumane interrogations that many say amount to torture.

Pentagon mistakes are not difficult to find. For example:

A man named Saddiq has been behind razor wire for more than four years, even though the military acknowledged last year that he was not an enemy combatant. His lawyer says his opposition to Osama bin Laden makes him too hot to handle in his native Saudi Arabia.

The Chinese Uighur Muslims had fled persecution in China and some of them are still being held at Guantanamo. The military says they would not be safe if returned to their native country.

The so-called "Bosnian Six" are six Algerians who were seized in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2002 and flown to Guantanamo after the Bosnian Supreme Court dismissed charges against them of plotting to blow up the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo.

Said one of them: "I've been here for three years and these accusations were just told to me... Nobody or any interrogator ever mentioned any of these accusations you are talking about now. Not even one mentioned the embassy thing, the terrorist organisation, the Algerian Islamic organisation. It's weird how this just came up now."

There are also at least three children, ages 13 to 15, according to Human Rights Watch, a leading advocacy group.

According to Defence Department files, a watch worn by one prisoner was similar to another Casio model that has a circuit board that al Qaeda used for making bombs. The U.S is using the Qaeda-favoured Casio wristwatch as evidence against at least nine detainees. But the offending model is sold in sidewalk stands around the world. And the detainee's Casio model hasn't been manufactured for years.

Murat Kurnaz is a Turk the government plucked off a bus in Pakistan and subsequently accused of being friends with a suicide bomber. The government did not tell Kurnaz's tribunal that his friend is alive and therefore could not be the referenced suicide bomber.

In January 2005, a federal judge singled out Kurnaz's case as evidence of the lack of due process in the Guantanamo tribunals. The judge said that his tribunal had ignored exculpatory evidence and relied instead on a single anonymous memo that was not credible.

A group of British men detained for nearly three years are now suing the U.S. government, alleging torture and other human rights violations. In a 115-page dossier, the men allege that they were beaten, stripped, shackled and deprived of sleep during their detention. They charge that guards threw prisoners' Korans into toilets and attempted to force them to give up their religious faith.

They say detainees were forcibly injected with unidentified drugs and intimidated with military dogs. And they claim they were subjected to abuse and beatings during their detention.

Each said they eventually gave false confessions that they appeared in a video with al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Atta, one of the Sep. 11 hijackers, despite the fact that they could prove they were in Britain when the video was made. After they were freed last March, the men were questioned by British police but quickly released without charge. (END/2006)

A state by state poll.

Weighted Average 61% diasapproval
Unweighted average 59% disapproval

Bush got a tiny boost with the death of Zarqawi.
But there still remains a hefty chunk of the American population disapproving of this administration.

What was the point of the link McG?

So we can hear silly comments like yours? :wink:

The point? To show a state by state poll. Woiyo is probably more spot on though.

I always enjoy Candidone's silly comments.

Did I mention that George Dumbya Bush is a goddam moron...and an insult to the office he now holds?

If I didn't:

George Dumbya Bush is a goddam moron...and an insult to the office he now holds?

And the people who still support the moron in chief ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Frank, To the point and obvious to most "thinking" people.