Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the Forever War
There are a lot of things wrong with Obama’s apparently imminent decision to just let Khalid Sheikh Mohammed rot in jail without a formal trial.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, will probably remain in military detention without trial for the foreseeable future, according to Obama administration officials.
The administration has concluded that it cannot put Mohammed on trial in federal court because of the opposition of lawmakers in Congress and in New York. There is also little internal support for resurrecting a military prosecution at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The latter option would alienate liberal supporters.
The administration asserts that it can hold Mohammed and other al-Qaeda operatives under the laws of war, a principle that has been upheld by the courts when Guantanamo Bay detainees have challenged their detention.
Obviously, it’s a further spineless capitulation on Obama’s part. It’s a concession, too, that all you have to do to eliminate the rule of law in this country is squawk in Congress and on Fox News.
It also serves as a guarantee that the 2001 AUMF declaring war against the now-50 al Qaeda members who had something to do with 9/11 will last forever–or at least for the rest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s life.
Mind you, the government has been planning on making this a forever war since 2001, precisely so it could hold people like KSM forever.
Now, with the decision to just let KSM rot, it seems to me, that plan gains a new anchor (and none too soon! given that only a handful of al Qaeda members remain in Afghanistan, that justification was getting rather dicey). After all, the very decision not to try KSM in a military commission is an admission that it would not work for him–it might rule out the death penalty for him in any case, but a military commission judge actually has leeway to adjust any sentence on account of the extreme torture KSM underwent, meaning our torture of KSM might become a central issue in a military commission.
But any further delay in charging KSM in civilian court make it less likely they’ll be able to charge him in the future, because this current delay almost certainly violates any interpretation of speedy trial rights. You can’t just wait to charge someone until such a time as the political winds make it easier to do.
Mind you, I agree that KSM is precisely the kind of person you do need to hold for the safety of the country (unlike many of the other detainees slotted for indefinite detention).
And that’s why this decision almost guarantees that the AUMF just became a forever war–at least one lasting the next twenty to forty years of KSM’s life. Because the government has apparently decided to hold KSM with no more solid legal justification than the war, which judges have interpreted to be the AUMF. Which means the government is going to have to sustain some claim that that AUMF remains in effect, even if we go broke and withdraw from Afghanistan as a result (that seems to be the only thing that will make us withdraw, in spite of the fact that we’re not going to do any good there).
Nine years ago, a British Embassy employee wrote,
As long as the war against terrorism in the widest sense continued, the US/UK would have rights to continue to detain those they had been fighting against (even if the fighting in Afghanistan itself were over). [Redacted] conceded that the strength of such a case would depend on the plausibility of the argument that the war was continuing.
The decision to hold KSM indefinitely has now flipped that equation: so long as the only justification for holding KSM is the claim we’re at war, we’ll have to remain at war.
And all those bonus powers a President gets with the claim that we’re at war? They’re all wrapped up now, in the necessity to hold KSM forever.
“Veni, vidi, vici” is a famous Latin phrase associated with Julius Caesar.
It means “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
Two millenia later, President Obama has changed that famous Latin phrase to one more fitting his own state: “Veni, vidi, victus.”
It means “I came, I saw, I was conquered.”
“Victus sum” — perhaps. “Victus” by itself is not a verb.
The practical problem, here, is that KSM is not an ordinary criminal. Rotting in jail for this admitted mass murdering perp is the least evil that can happen.
“Spineless capitulation” ?
Cummon………………………….
It is not about KSM, it is about us; do we have the fortitude to stand up for and uphold our founding principles, Constitution and rule of law? That is the issue.
Agreed.
William Lind, when discussing the mendacity and stupidity of the various US wars post-9/11, was quoting a US Marine as saying “We are the red coats now.”
A nation, founded in insurgency, once claimed that in the course of human events it might become necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another. Well, you are witness to dissolution on the largest possible scale, with a corrupt elite dissolving all restraints that connected them to your commons. Your constitution is about to become a relic, a piece of paper to be worshipped by empty minds, not a reality lived by its citizens. The issue is indeed not KSM, Khadr, al-Awlaki – it is the rule of greedy, stupid men that have taken over this nation, and will no doubt destroy it from the inside out – maybe not in your lifetime, but as surely as Rome fell once it became a hollow shell.
Excellent point, brother bmaz, and one that all too easily has been forgotten or ignored the past ten years by people who know better.
My highschool Latin was way too rusty, so I trusted Google to attempt the translation. I’ll have to let let them know their “English to Latin translator” got a failing grade. *g*
As to EW’s description of “spineless capitulation”, to mix a metaphor, if the shoe fits…
No, it’s not. See above and my description of what our commitment to having al-Libi rot away wrought. Getting at the truth is always the least evil thing. The fact that is also always the most good is a side benefit.
Obama and Holder might as well go all in on this process. Remember those crazy “trend lines” CNN would run during debates to show how some live audience was responding in real time to what was being said? Maybe we should just hook that baby up to Congressional Republicans and Fox News and let them have the real-time say on all matters handled by the Department Formerly Named Justice.
But seriously, how on earth do they think they are doing what is right when they openly admit that political considerations are driving “legal” decisions? We are all well and truly fucked.
Silly laws…they only get in the way of good old fashioned authoriTAY!
If we wish to stop these expanding “rules” on handling terorists, we need only apply the rules to the extreme end of antiabortion/antigay activism. The hate speech of Phelps is no worse that that american citizen cleric in Yemen. And there have been more terror attacks against abortion than by moslems against America since 9/11, prompted by our own religious right.
As soon as we lock up Rush, Beck, and some fox bigwigs for terrorist support, the GOPers in congress will find a way to resurrect the constitution.
Boxturtle (The question must be asked: Would we have been worse off under McBush for the last couple years?)
McCain is obviously corrupt, a bully, a jerk, a liar, a panderer, a filanderer, a warmongerer and worse.
That said,
President McCain would not – could not have resuscitated and reinvigorated the Republican Party. McCain could not have taken a wrecking ball to the Democratic party.
These Grand Accomplishments are Obama’s.
I suspect we’d have Queen Sarah by now, if he had been elected.
Remaining in a forever war does have its financial advantages. The war profiteers are using the fact to declare that the Pentagon budget can’t be reduced because we have to support the troops.
Back in the fifties it was “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.” (Engine Charlie Wilson)
Now it’s “What’s good for Lockheed and the other war profiteers is good for the country.” KSM is merely a side issue compared to all the other people who are killed, maimed, displaced, imprisoned, raped and tortured so some people can make money, money, money.
Wars are forever.
The AUMF authorized attacks against nations that sponsored 9-11. That would be Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Richard Haas and Richard Armitage and the rest of the Bushie Crime Family protected and concealed the state sponsored terrorism that was 9-11.
The neo-cons covered up Pakistan creation and support of AQ, Let, Taliban, because the Terror groups were just proxies for the PNACers who infest the “intelligence community”.
Pakistan has continued its Great Game and Armitage and Richard Haas and yes Petey Peterson, all pretend to believe Pakistan. Pakistan pretends to believe the neo-cons and they all keep padding their Swiss bank accounts. The Quadrennial Defense Review written by Stephen Hadley and Armitage reviews nothing, especially Armitage’s failures and lies for war. The QDR (pdf) does promise that Afghanistan is a Forever War, plus maybe other Forever Wars.
I’m sure o is a plant by carl rove. Yes I have my tin foil hat on but it doesn’t seem to hold out the crazies any more.
So much for that pesky “rule of law”.
I can easily see some future novelist writing an updated Count of Monte Cristo about one of the indefinitely detained at Gitmo.
The administration has concluded that it cannot put Mohammed on trial in federal court because of the opposition of lawmakers in Congress and in New York.
The administration OUGHT to conclude that it has to OBEY THE CONSTITUTION. This is the sickest, most spineless, ugliest crew of goons we’ve ever had. They’ve gutted our system of laws and thrown the carcass in the trash.
I’m a johnny-come-lately to the Obama camp, primarily because he never promised universal care, and I believed Hillary — having been through the wars and survived — knew how to make that happen.
Nevertheless, I was happy when a democrat won the election. And I guess, reading over this thread and the accompanying posts — that I am a Johnny-come-lately, yet again.
Do you want the president to go to the mat — I acknowledge this is a crucial question — over the imprisonment of KSM knowing that he knows and we know that he will lose? Would he do better trying to change the premise, which is to say, how did Congress get involved in answering the question of whether or not KSM will or will not be put on trial, whether military or otherwise?
Do you want him to re-institute the use of thousands upon thousands of signing statements? Should he use the same strategies as the hated republicans? They worked. Has the goal become more important than the process?
Do we, here, at least admit that we are now in the weeds and that if we cannot even get a few thousand people to the mall in support of Medicare for All, that it would be virtually impossible for the “all-knowing” people to rise up in support of either 1) the rule of law; or, 2) specifically, to determine the fate of KSM?
I just don’t get all this dumping on Obama. I understand how disappointed everyone must be — particularly in light of the all of the hope and hoped-for change. But doesn’t reality enter into the picture at any point in these dashed dreams? Don’t we look back at what the President was facing and is facing, and ask ourselves what is possible? Do we ever compromise for the sake of winning something?
We’ve just lost a crucial election. The president’s hands will be tied for the next two years. The people have spoken, including the 60% who couldn’t be bothered to show up.
And NOW is the time to make extra demands on a man who has lost the support of the House and half of the Senate? Is it really the time to ask him to lose on every other issue facing the US? He shouldn’t have made fun of the progressives — that was a mistake. Can anyone forgive him and help him win what is actually possible?
You’re even farther behind that you thought.
The president, who is supposed to know constitutionallaw, won’t go to the mat for the right of KSM, or any other detainee, to a fair and speedy trial.
He won’t go to the mat for taxpayers against Wall Street.
He won’t go to the mat for GLBT against DOMA and DADT.
He won’t go to the mat for women against the Hyde amendment.
He won’t go to the mat for older people and the poor against insurance companies.
So why the hell should we give him the benefit of the doubt?
His “hands are tied” because he has been the most disastrously incompetent president imaginable. “Under the circumstances” as you say. The time to make demand on him were when he won, had the biggest mandate and congressional majorities conceivable and he pissed it all away. The demand now should be that he gets the hell out of the way so that hopefully a more reasonable and capable candidate can take the party forward and try to rescue it from the crapper Obama flushed it in to.
So just call the next two years a total waste because the democrat in charge has his priorities all wrong?
We don’t have a leader — there is no Feingold, there is no Grayson — we don’t even have any cheerleaders. And so we fold our hands for the next two years or begin working on 2012 because there’s nothing to be done. Oh, and we can gripe on a message board about how terrible it is not to have any democrats in the house or the senate or the court or the white house (they’re Rove plants).
In his defense, the president has followed his principles when dealing with all that you have mentioned. He has said all along that decisions that were once made in the white house over some bourbon, will now be made in Congress. He proposes, they act on it, and he signs.
Every thing else does not have the legitimacy to stand for long. Any signing statement can be overturned by the next president.
Maybe he’ll change now. Maybe now he realizes that his vision for the way Washington is supposed to work, the way it worked before Bush just isn’t going to happen. Maybe he WILL use signing statements to fix the ills — he’ll become “OUR HERO” the new, new emperor in charge.
I rather doubt it. He can ill afford to lose on major and minor issues than when the house was democratic. Signs on weakness at this point will cause kidiots like DeMint and his ilk to believe that they have won everything. And frankly, the American people aren’t paying enough attention to know the difference.
Historically, Progressives don’t win their issues by thumb wrestling. In the past, they were assisted by a lively press who were NOT making enough money to worry about the next tax increase. In the past, they had new immigrants will little to lose, a lot to gain, and an idealism that swept the ghettos and turned people out. And if the idealism didn’t do it, the factory fires did.
We’re not going to win anything by alienating the only people who could potentially help us win a few. Waiting two years should NOT be an option. That’s more arm chair quarterbacking.
So on one hand you say that Bush is capable of bringing change, but then on the other hand you say that Obama isn’t. Since you claim that Obama must copy Bush practices, why defend Obama as he’s purely figurehead then that you could have just as well gotten if we had President McCain instead.
If Obama is “following his principles” now, then he lied through his teeth about what his principles were when he was running for election. You can tend to your own chair, I will not be waiting two years. I will be busy trying to figure out who to support against the most disastrously incompetent President in my lifetime. Bush was horrible, but at least he was not spineless quivering coward like Barack Obama. The man does not have sufficient vertebrate development to be in the job he is.
I’m cracking up over the name vis a vis the comments. “Hi, my name is Primose and Obama is my path. ” ;)
A. Obama has been making huge use of signing statements – what made you think otherwise? The Dems haven’t sent him much of anything that would be a check on Exec power, so that helps him out quite a bit, but he’s done his fair share on the signing statement front.
B. Without signing statements indicating that he won’t follow Congressional laws he doesn’t like, Obama has also been making judicious use of his power to not obey court orders. A slew of them. From his DOJ deliberately hiding information they had been ordered to hand over on the mental instability of their pretty much sole source of claims against dozens of Yemeni detainees at GITMO, to contemptuously disregarding habeas release orders. He didn’t sit back and “let Congress” put healthcare together. He ran on a platform of public option and no mandate and got a personal grudge against Krugman who nicely pointed out to him that Hilary’s yes to public option and to mandate – basically universal – was the only way to make it work. Then, when elected, he went into a back room and made deals to directly flip flop into the most disastrous position of yes on mandate, no on public option. Strongly backing a public option to put the opposition in the position of having to go on record that they don’t think Americans should have the option to buy into their coverage would have been, over the long haul (even if there were battles lost on the way) the surest route to real healthcare reform as opposed to forcing the ever more impoverished to buy crappy healthcare that delivers almost nothing. He didn’t back off and let Congress do its thing, he hasn’t backed off to let the courts do their thing, and when he’s done his backroom deals, they have been for the benefit of the very interests that will do their damnedest to hurt the middle class and him later.
C. What universe are you coming from to think that if Obama just “compromise” i.e., gives the Republicans pretty much everything they want – that he somehow (i) will now win votes and support for Democrats and (ii) is any more worth having in office than a Republican? On all the issues we hear Obama shouldn’t be pushed on and should be allowed to compromise on – they are ALL issues where, no matter what he gives, he not only will not win any Republican votes over, he only reinforces to the indies that he doesn’t know what he’s doing and they’d be better off with a Republican who spearheaded the approach Obama’s capitulating to. All that happens when he says “Bush was right, I get it now, yeah, we should go around and grab people and torture them and then promote our torturers and give them benefits and accolades and destroy evidence and threaten courts and threaten allies like Britain if they talk about our torture and have a forever war and tell everyone it’s like no other war” is that people say “oh, ok, so we really do need to vote for the Republican who knew all that all along and who also is promising to ditch that mandate crap.” That’s a winner … how, exactly? How’d it work in this last election?
D. It’s not about demanding compromise or no compromise. It’s about demanding truth, integrity and accountability. He hasn’t offered any of it on anything. He hasn’t because the full truth isn’t flattering to anyone, including the Dems who were running their part of the show, but the fact that his motivation is partly to safe their backsides isn’t really all that compelling. He wasn’t truthful about his deals to kill the public option and force mandates and now he doesn’t want accountability for that decision. He ditched release of pictures, revved up more war, has structured even more assassination squads in even more countries and was killing civilians with drones literally within days of being sworn into office. He lied about bringing real accountabiltiy and reform to the DOJ. After running on accountabilty he immediately snugged up with his torturers and killers and told them – nah, not really, that was just a chain yank, let’s not look back and hey buds, who can we bomb.”
He killed Maher Arar’s suit, he hasn’t made the real stories of war crimes like those depicted in the photos he wouldn’t relase known – and he’s flat out told the world that when the President and American military are involved, it’s a joke for anyone to expect any justice, military or civilian.
He’s not a good man and he’s stabbed the country in the back in a way that no Republican President could have. One reason we have no Feingold is because Obama forced him to capitulate – to support Obama even when Obama had clearly and completely lied to the electorate and even when Feingold himself had clearly delineated the problems with the President’s healthcare deal, for example, and the President’s promises and what they country actually needed. The left isn’t why Feingold lost – Obama is. And a Republican President wouldn’t have made Feingold’s support lose their faith in him bc he’d have continued to fight. Once he became a backroom dealmaker to go along with Obama, to support Obama’s bad presidency decisions, that’s when he cut his own throat, unfortunately.
It’s amazing how compelling truth is and it’s amazing how much of the work towards goals would have been already done if the truth was just used and made known. If Obama released the August 2002 memo where the CIA told Bush that a huge chunk of the GITMO prisoners were not combatants of any kind, much less al Qaeda; if Obama had released the information on al-Libi torture and how he was shipped off to Libya to cover up the way in which torture was affirmatively used to secure false statements and how Bush laundered those through Powell to the UN and how his “suicide” was very unfortunate for the historic record; if Obama had come forward with a public address where he explained the facts behind stories like Maher Arar and Khalid el-Masri and Dilawar (and Dilawar’s cab fares who were shipped to GITMO) and explained the bounty process and how many mistakes it involved – most of his work would have been done for him. Republicans arguing that we shouldn’t let bounty victims have real hearings even in the face of a Presidential recital of the failings of the Arar and el-Masri and other cases would have been in a very different postiion than Republicans carving out KSM as “the issue” and Obama and Holder parrotting the “war like no other” Bush phrasing and and Obama fighting habeas for even the Chinese Uighurs. BTW – if you want compromsie, well, Dana frickin Rohrbacher was trying to get the Uighurs relocated to the US! There’s a Republican ally and bipartisan effort Obama could have pulled off – why didn’t he?
Obama has become so degenerate, as a matter of fact, that he is willing to plant the disinformation that somehow “the left” just “wont allow” a military commission trial of KSM. That’s bull. His problem with a military commission is torture. If he wanted to have a real, true, military trial he runs smack up against torture, evidence destruction, etc. But it’s so much easier to blame ‘the left’ than the criminal actions of the CIA and Bush as being his problem with even a military trial.
Yeah, the problem with the “military commissions” isn’t “the left”, it is the absence of a proper legal foundation and due process structure for the tribunals, coupled with the fact that even given that, the military judges have been doing weird things like listening to torture arguments and tossing, or at least contemplating tossing, evidence. The problem with the commissions is that the commissions have problems. The “liberal left” is doing no more than pointing out the obvious. The simplistic platitudes grown on Primrose’s path are uninformed and fall apart in the face of the facts.
But, again, the really telling thing is Obama is such a degenerate coward that he doe not even have the guts to make the call for commissions. Nero is just going to fiddle.
And once you have a military trial tossing evidence bc it is derived from torture – or once you refuse to let military defense counsel have access to evidence of torture to use in their case and once you have military courts being faced with defense counsel who are demanding information as to the destruction of evidence, well, you don’t have Eric Holder and Bull Durham anymore.
And there’s some problem. Or at least, it’s a problem as long as you want to keep being a liar. If you want to face the truth and get the nation to deal with the truth, not so much.
Obama has no values or principles.
No. Obama makes backdoor deals that hurt people with insurance corporations and Big PhRMA and then rahms his filthy back-stabbing deals through Congress. Then he gives billions of dollars to banks and corporations to gamble with in the World Casino, build factories in foreign countries, and outsource jobs. Oh, and I almost forgot. He creates the Catfood Commission and packs it with people dedicated to eliminating social security.
Signing statements? They have nothing to do with anything because Congress has been doing exactly what he ordered it to do. Hero? Obama is a chicken-shit narcissist asshole. Emperor? We don’t need or want a fucking emperor. We’re supposed to be a democracy, remember?
Armchair quarterbacking? WTF are you talking about? For the good of the country, we need to force this asshole to resign, decide not to seek a second term, or primary his sorry ass.
Obama is so bad, he’s worse than Bush.!
Well, I don’t know. He has apparently become an acolyte of Larry Summers on Here’s How We Do It At Harvard. Namely, problems are not solved by indicting people who break the law, but by handling things with back-room deals negotiated with The Right People. After all, Obama went to Harvard, and Larry Summers was president of Harvard. So, maybe that scene in Social Network shows us something about how Obama operates.
Bob in AZ
Then call him a POW and hold him util the war on terror is over. But if you’re going to treat him as a criminal, he gets a trial and a lawyer just like we do for any mass murderer. But to do either would embarass the government, so ObamaLLP tookthe cowards way ot.
ObamaLLP let them. The quetion should never have left the DOJ, but the DOJ is more about politcs tha justice anymore.
Why, when he’s getting what he wants without them? And he already is doing the same strategies we hated from the republicans.
Do not assume that a few strong people cannot change the world. Indeed, nothing else ever has.- Ghandi
Do you get it now? :-)
You misunderstand. Most of us have given up on him.
Boxturtle (Go Lemmings Go!)
Since you like finding excuses for Obama, doesn’t your rationalizations also apply to Bush…if a Presidents’ hands are supposedly tied due to what is allegedly beyond their control, what does it matter who we have as President? If Obama’s hands are tied for how he conducts civil rights/civil liberties, doesn’t that mean that Bush is owed an apology for all the things that he was blamed for? I don’t see how you can just blow off the Constitution so nonchalantly as being something you’d be OK with it being followed, but you’ll find excuses when it isn’t.
We pay, all of us, the president to do the following job,
“Preserve ,protect and defend the Constitution of the United States .” (period there is no or, or maybe, or sometimes….)
The other part of our constitutional contract starts ,binding on both parties, is the Fifth Amendment which states ” No person” not No American, no person means just that, all the world’s citizens are entitled to that protection. After all we want the world to copy our perfected form of government and that would include the complete body of law we claim to follow, right?
Going on to Amendment 8 ” nor shall there be cruel and unusual punishments.”
Disappearing his two pre-teen children, after torturing them, would seem to most civilized human beings fitting the definition in the 8th amendment.
Do the job he swore to carry out or quit , like Sarah. Maybe he should go reread the little engine that could for some encouragement, if that’s really all he missing other than cajones.
Didn’t you notice the asterisk?
The footnote says, “unless we’re at war; then all bets are off.”
It’s the Harvard Way, dontcha know.
Bob in AZ
HELL NO!
Obama has and is committing war crimes, and like Bush, Cheney, and the rest of their vile crew of torturers and enablers of torture, all of them should be tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison by the International Court of Criminal Justice.
I want to be forever rid of these disgusting assholes.
Yeah, that’s the thing. My only problem if the Republicans try and impeach Obama is that it will be for the wrong charges, not that Obama shouldn’t be impeached.
Must be too early for me, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the line:
“The latter option would alienate liberal supporters.”…
I mean, Barry has liberal supporters? And if he actually does, we’re supposed to believe he cares about what they think?
Bad, Bad, Dirty Hippies! Keeping this poor beleaguered president from holding his constitution-busting trials in a military court. Well, he’ll show them, he’ll just not hold any trial! So There!
I’m stuck on those same lines too, UnkaWillbur:
Um, but … Khadr? Is it possible that it is breaking through to the so-called liberals in Washington who reportedly were squeamish about Khadr’s trial continuing that their little plea-deal gambit (bury this case as fast as poss) did not work? That it made them and Obama look even worse than they already did? That the Khadr case is never going to be buried and will always be a source of shame (one among many, admittedly) for the U.S., and now specifically for Obama?
I know that is all I ever do, asking the President to keep on making the incredibly bad choices he has made.
But there are some other people who really, really, really want the President to lose, lose, lose. Of course I am talking about the very bad Democrats, Pat Caddell and someone name Schoen who claims to be a Democrat. Blame these ratfuckers, who writing in the WaPo, want more bipartisan slop and they say Obama should emulate Bailin’ Palin.
Team Obama may not feel they have any real options here. If they put KSM on trial and he successfully challenges all the evidence against him, he’ll walk. They figure it’s less trouble to keep him in prison. It pisses off the civil libertarians, but they’re not macho men and they don’t count.
Since when did having gulags in the US become a “real option”?
Since the Supreme Court decided that George Bush was their choice for President.
We can’t overturn 8 years of what — how to characterize in one word what he did to this country. I’m unable to sum it up, but just know I believe he’s the worst president in our history.
And, no his meddling cannot be overturned immediately, in light of the facts on the ground, to wit:
40% of the electorate actually showed up, 60% were too busy.
21% were republicans and 19% were democrats
Sarah Palin has struck a nerve in a small but noisy portion of the electorate and their demands are ridiculous at best, but STILL must be taken into consideration because WE haven’t been able to laugh her off the stage. WE haven’t been able to intimidate her with our brains and logic — she’s waaaay too stupid. In fact, if anything, we have encouraged her, strengthened her simply by paying attention. Republicans believe she must be important and frightening to liberals because we talk about her all the time.
Because while polls show that most Americans have a Progressive streak on many if not most issues, none of them, not even the most rabid, are willing to step up, step out, and show the Congress of the United States that they are not doing the will of the people.
“Since the Supreme Court decided that George Bush was their choice for President.
We can’t overturn 8 years of what — how to characterize in one word what he did to this country. I’m unable to sum it up, but just know I believe he’s the worst president in our history.”
Seeing how your justification dates back to what happened way before Obama even ran for President, you are calling Obama a liar and fraud with his “change” election. When Obama was running for President, what were doing to point out that his candidacy was based on fraud?
“Sarah Palin has struck a nerve in a small but noisy portion of the electorate and their demands are ridiculous at best, but STILL must be taken into consideration because WE haven’t been able to laugh her off the stage. WE haven’t been able to intimidate her with our brains and logic — she’s waaaay too stupid. In fact, if anything, we have encouraged her, strengthened her simply by paying attention. Republicans believe she must be important and frightening to liberals because we talk about her all the time.”
You are encouraging her with your disregard for the Constitution. How afterall can she be laughed off the stage when you make excuses for a President not having to follow the Constitution? If you wish to laugh Palin off the stage, don’t tell her and the Republicans that the Constitution can be ignored and excuses can be made for Presidents and Congress.
“Because while polls show that most Americans have a Progressive streak on many if not most issues, none of them, not even the most rabid, are willing to step up, step out, and show the Congress of the United States that they are not doing the will of the people.”
So you think we should be governed based on polls instead of based on the Constitution – oh, let me correct that, you’re for using the Constitution when it polls well.
“Sarah Palin has struck a nerve in a small but noisy portion of the electorate and their demands are ridiculous at best, but STILL must be taken into consideration because WE haven’t been able to laugh her off the stage. WE haven’t been able to intimidate her with our brains and logic — she’s waaaay too stupid.”
Welcome to the world as it really is, Primrose.
You see Sarah was just in town this past week. Laugh her off the stage of the private christian school where she spoke? WE we’re allowed in to laugh. But the big laugh was when the demonstrators ,who were protesting her policies, where forcibly removed before she arrived at her private fundraiser we weren’t invited to either.
“We can’t overturn 8 years of what — how to characterize in one word what he did to this country.”
Why not pray tell ?
The President on day one could have ordered the detention , off the stage of George Bush and Dick Cheney for treason and The Torture/ Murder/ Treason network they started. He just got done swearing to uphold and defend the constitution, that would include the Convention Against Torture which requires the President to order them detained, to prevent the further taint we are witnessing now with the Torture/ Murder/ Treason Book tour.
You know it would have been the antidote to the shock and awe the country had been put through.
It must go back at least to…
Slave plantations: spread through the country.
Native American (Indian) reservations, (mass relocations).
Japanese interment camps in ’40’s.
Parsed terms like “off shored” ( Cuba) and “enemy combatants” (goat herders ) vs. prisoners of war.
Terrorist vs. criminal.
What other terms might facilitate new systems and ways to do old things.
Await for the next generation of camps, fema or otherwise.
The passing away of “The Rule of Law” will not bring a happy outcome.
That seems to be where the main action is now, (Irony) from the constitutional wizkid who grew up in a log cabin in Illinios… NOT!
The more it assaults the obvious, ( in your face but you try to retain a sense of denial, but also sense something amiss, as… a perception of larger than usual teeth:
“ The better to eat you with my Dear… “ said the wolf.
Did you review your comment for consistency before hitting the publish button? The US claims the unfettered right to detain KSM and the others indefinitely. Indeed you are advocating they do just that and that it is hunky dory (an intellectually and constitutionally craven theory, but I will assume ot for the sake of argument here). So, contrary to your hyperventilating fearmonger tripe that were KSM to “win” his trial, he would “walk” This is, of course, bunk because of the above claimed indefinite detention claims.
It’s crazy not holding trials and just going right to the sentencing – let’s just sentence everyone who is accused of a crime and maybe after the sentencing let there be a trial for a few of them….but not the really nasty ones, just those who get like speeding tickets.
the constitutional law scholar in the white house is making our founders spin in their graves
Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t Pennsylvania and DC also have jurisdiction for a trial re: the 9/11 attacks? Seems I remember some things happening in those places that day as well.
Re: asdf at #20- a part-time constitutional law professor is not a constitutional scholar, I don’t think. Nevertheless, anyone who even took a case in Con law should be appalled at these craven decisions.
The decision to hold KSM indefinitely has now flipped that equation: so long as the only justification for holding KSM is the claim we’re at war, we’ll have to remain at war.
Yes, exactly correct Marcy. That’s where we are heading. Brilliant observation.
But if it is going to be forever war, shouldn’t we at least be holding these prisoners according to the Geneva Conventions? Isn’t that what Obama promised in his big speech on the subject? or has he already forgotten that promise as well?
Greenwald is calling out the “career progressives”:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/14/trials/index.html
I don’t know if Glenn will make this point, but when I read this from the WashPo, I nodded my head in grim acknowledgment:
What Peter Finn and Anne Kornblut are really saying is that while there has been a noticeable amount of protest over not using civilian courts to try the “war on terror” or 9/11 prisoners, that if the government wants to use indefinite detention, there will be less protest. In fact, David Cole wrote an article in the NY Review of Books arguing for a case for indefinite detention, under certain conditions. There has been very little protest at all from previous Obama trial balloons about keeping indefinite detention, so now it looks like it will become a full-blown reality.
This is ominous for the United States, as holding people without charges or trial for years, for decades, is becoming an acceptable, if inconvenient, reality.
As for KSM, why should he be treated any differently from any other accused. I disagree that there is reason to hold him. Until such evidence is produced in court, under our existing system, his incarceration is a matter of abuse of power, not justice or security.
Obama and his Hahvard complex. Kagan & Cap’n Jack are “his people”
Someone like Obama could have never ever ever in a million years, made a documentary like Inside Job. He could never have even imagined asking those kind of questions from the Ivy boys and girls. In his own way, he’s as intellectually incurious as Bush. If there’s a Hahvard prof to rely upon, he doesn’t have to think himself.
Even ones who have no discernible substantive record of writing, speaking or taking stands on issues in the past like Kagan.
So the latest Obama motto is: Liberals Prefer Gulags
Well, we’ll see. This is a moment of truth for American liberals. I don’t hold out much hope for them, and Glenn Greenwald’s essay today is definitely a call-out. He contrasts the situation with the turnaround when Obama took the decision on civilian trials away from Holder, or when Obama did an about-face on the release of the torture photos.
We have a most cowardly political class, and a craven group of liberal commentators (exceptions here, Glenn, and some others noted). But to join with Obama and the Democrats, including the feckless Nancy Pelosi, in refusing to investigate and demand accountability on torture (because they are torturing now, mainly), we now have a refusal to stand by basic Constitutional principles upon which the nation was founded. I think Glenn put it quite well:
Thanks, Marcy, for speaking up on this, and standing up for what is right.
“Well, we’ll see.”
I was mocking Obama’s claim that he’s gotta have gulags since liberals would presumably dislike military trials more (which itself is a false choice). I’m glad that the likes of Glenn Greenwald are around.
Isn’t indefinite detention a form of torture?
Yes. It is contributes to psychological torture, by inducing despair.
Wasn’t it one of the grudges we had against George in 1776?
I believe this must be the most bizarre, dishonest, and lame set of excuses that any president has ever offered in an effort to justify intentionally violating his oath of office.
Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution requires the President-Elect to swear or affirm to the following oath:
President Barack Obama took the oath of office at his inauguration.
The duty to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” is absolute and neither excused by “the opposition of lawmakers in Congress and in New York,” nor the “alienat[ion] of liberal supporters.”
This excuse is not only mere whining, it’s fundamentally dishonest because Obama is a lawyer and former constitutional law professor who knows that the opinions of “lawmakers in Congress and in New York” about whether someone confined in United States custody is entitled to a civilian trial by jury are irrelevant. He also has made it absolutely clear that he, not only could not possibly care less about what liberals think about any issue, he delights in “hippie punching,” marginalizing, and alienating liberals just for the hell of it. As offended as I am by his decision to indefinitely incarcerate Khalid Sheik Mohammed in violation of the oath he took when he was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, I am even more offended and disgusted by his whining and dishonest excuse for violating his oath. He could not have offended and disgusted me any more if he had pulled out his dick and in full view of the American public spit on and pissed all over the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Obama must be impeached for this egregious and willful refusal to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” and that process should begin immediately.
I’ve had it with this narcissistic lying asshole.
ah, the key word in the oath is “and will to the best of my ability“.
we’ve learned the hard way obama’s political ambition far outstrips his ability, and we the country left to suffer the non-stop, morally repugnant, rule of law destroying flesh & blood consequences.
“President Barack Obama took the oath of office at his inauguration.”
Twice.
I had that very thought, b2020. Neither he nor Roberts could quite get it right, eh?
With all this talk of long war and forever war leaves me thinking the AUMF is now a new section of the Constitution.
Today, the foreign terrorists; tomorrow, the domestic dissidents.
Also, it’s important for all of you to remember that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia. Or is it Eurasia? My memory isn’t so good on this one.
That’s an impressive pile of shit.
The people who live in NYC don’t seem to have a problem with trying him there, but the congresscritters in the red states do, so the red-state congresscritters get what they want, as usual.
And the liberal supporters – all three or four of them that are left at this point – get kicked in the teeth, as usual.
Whatever happened to ‘change we can believe in’?
When Nancy took impeachment off the table, the American people decried the failure to push back against the monsters of coercion. If republicans could string up Clinton over a blow job then why couldn’t Nancy push back over high crimes and misdemeanors engineered by Bush?
That failure to balance the books on Bush had the short term benefit of storing up political capital for the 2008 electoral victory but squandered the energy when no follow through was provided by Obama. Progressives expected more from the man who they had entrusted with accountability.
What is missing here is TRUST. Improper accounting has left us with so many off-blance-sheet operations, we’ve become Enron, USA.
If we fail to hold these ultra-criminals responsible for their attacks on our very souls, we lose confidence in our leadership and the social contract fails.
The next two years will be the sorting out process in which the off-balance-sheet liabilities come home to roost. When the dust settles, it won’t be the republicans “in whom we trust”. Militantly ignorant tea partiers are not exactly trustworthy either… just useful idiots to stir things up.
A true democrat can bring change but the first step will be to restore trust.
It looks like things will have to be completely broken before they’re properly fixed. That is likely to involve a systemic collapse of the corrupt shadow financial system as well. As much as I had hoped for a clean break with the malfeasance of the past, it is naive to believe it will be anything less than a totally consuming conflagration. Then, in 2012, change we can believe in will be a simple matter of voting your conscience… What’s left of it, that is…
And by the way, why aren’t Charles Schumer and Andrew Cuomo and Peter King rotting in hell already, anyway?
What’s that? They must wait for Holder and Margolis, and a whole line of Bushistas?
Damn. Who would thought the road to hell would get so crowded?
There is one more consideration that I keep pointing out now and then, and that is that KSM’s torture still has not stopped. His children were abducted before he was, and we threatened to kill them as part of his torture. Furthermore, there whereabouts and condition are still unknown, so that aspect of his torture continues today.
Ack. Make that their whereabouts, but you get the idea.
When I think of Obama on his way to be “briefed” by Brennan and Rahm, I think of a Farside comic. A car is driving down the street and dogs are on the sidewalk/in yards watching it go by. A dog is in the back seat of the car, hanging his head out, waving to the other dogs, big goofy grin, saying something like, “Guess What Guys, I’m Going to Get Tutored!!”
No trial..he admitted guilt. Cut the taxpayer a break.
No trial..he didn’t give those 3 thousand pesky infidels a trial.
I say, shave him, take away the prayer mat and koran and feed him pork.
Sounds about right.
Then that is exactly how you should be treated if and when you are accused of something. Jeebus, the stupid, it burns.
After coercion and torture, anyone will admit to any guilt. We were given an example within days of 9/11, when we threatened to have Egyptian police take in Abdallah Higazy’s sister and leeringly implied we’d have them rape her. So he admitted to his role. Except he had no role.
After now-Pepsico Gen Counsel, then Dep Atty Gen, Larry Thompson arranged for Maher Arar to be shipped to Syria for coercion and torture, Arar confessed to his trips to al-Qaeda training camps. Except they never happened.
The so-called “Tipton Three” after abuse and coercion confessed to being three previously unidentified men in a piece of videotape with Bin Laden. Except they weren’t.
Probably most importantly, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi under torture “confessed” that Al-Qaeda had training camps in Iraq. That false torture confession didn’t actually end up saving the taxpayers anything. When you value the confession over the truth and the truthfinding process, you end up with thousands of dead US soldiers, tens of thousands of maimed US soldiers, six figures of dead Iraqi civilians, 2 million – almost 10% – of Iraq’s population as refugees, thousands of Iraqi civilians wrongfully abused in US concentrated population camps maintained to further coerce and abuse civilians who were rounded up for no reason and huge recruitment for al Qaeda plus a trillion or so of squandered taxpayer dollars.
Tortured confessions don’t save money.
Exactly – just like Abdallah Higazy didn’t give them a trial either. Except that didn’t work very well either, did it? The Nazis got their trials at Nuremberg, and the world learned from them and became horrified and repelled at what they were revealed, in a full and fair and thorough evidentiary trial, to have done. The Nazi movement withered after the war in large part due to revelations of what its monsters had done, complete with trial. BTW – that 3,000 – included Muslims. The Oklahoma bombers were given trials as well. Under your approach, we should have just tortured a confession to the Olympic bombings out of Richard Jewell and that would have been just as good as (bc it was quick and painless and saved money) digging into the facts and finding out that Jewell wasn’t the bomber and perverted piece of trash like Eric Rudolph was.
No trial means the families and the nation never learn what really happened. No trial means others who were involved and culpable are never exposed. No trial means the failings that allowed 9/11 never get fully confronted and addressed. No trial means that we have a Pakistani (likely tortured) who has been tried and convicted of being the man to actually perform the killing of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan and KSM who, after his torture and coercion sessions, has confessed to the very same act and the truth is an empty glass.
Since KSM is anything but a devout Muslim that doesn’t sound right at all. A shave and a pork hotdog probably sound good to him too. I’d say try him, reveal and prove in detail his monstrous acts and tie in everyone who had anything to do with them and try them as well and then if and as they are convicted, apply the punishments the law spells out.
Testify, sister. You give me heart.
“Tortured confessions don’t save money.”
That’s for sure. But they sure do make money for Haliburton, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, HealthNet, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and a host of other companies, large and small.
A devil’s orgy of greed and porcine gluttony.
Yeah. Trials can be icky and unpleasant, and can result in exposing others who were involved and culpable. That’s Not How We Do Things At Harvard.
Bob in AZ
The rule of law is nothing if you don’t have the people desiring it. This is Obama throwing down the gauntlet to those in the left who do nothing but gripe about him like petulant children and sit at home on election day.
You want to protect the Constitution?
Put your money where your mouth is and mobilize.
Awww, it’s had its widdle feewings hurt.
In case you hadn’t noticed, we did mobilize. And were ignored, time after time. Just as we’re being ignored now: we’re DFNs, and nothing we can say or do will ever be heard by the Serious People in NY and DC.
Great advice to the foreclosed upon – put your money into mobilizing. ;)
You might not have noticed this, but mobilizing works best when people have facts and the truth to work with. “Yes we can” was great for mobility – downward mobility for a huge chunk of the nation. The people griping about Obama weren’t the ones sitting home – they may not have been voting for his candidates, but they weren’t sitting home. The ones sitting home where those who had been mobilized to the tune of “yes we can.” They were the ones who were listless as he abandoned them.
Obama wouldn’t know a gauntlet if it hit him in the face ;) and without someone like John Yoo to give him the memo, he wouldn’t understand its fucntion either. He’s not throwing down gauntlets to the left – he’s being who he is – a pretty bad politician who is a worse leader and an even worse example of thought or concern or principle or even pragmatism. He hasn’t protected his torturers as a gauntlet, he’s done it bc his insular inner circle tells him its the right thing to do and because he would way rather please someone like Jack Goldsmith than do the right thing for the country. He wants people to say he’s being bipartisan and thoughtful and pragmatic and he wants to fingersteeple for the camera with knitted brow to be taken as serious.
He wants admiration and adulation and he’s not that very very different from Bush on that score either. I guess it would be helpful if we elected someone without father issues for a change, but envisioning Obama as someone psyched to throw a gauntlet requires a retreat from reality. Dude.
Do YOU want the Constitution? Then you better get off your fanboy ass and realize that Mr. Obama is actually doing more deep damage to the Constitution and rule of law than the Bush/Cheney cabal ever did. There are always criminals who break the law; the law can survive that and indeed is designed to address and remedy that. But when those charged with protecting and defending the Constitution and rule of law are cowardly, lazy and politically motivated to not apply the law, to not criminally investigate and prosecute the most brazen and heinous attacks on our Constitutional ethos in the history of this country, but instead seek to ratify and sanction the same and, even worse, geometrically expand it in their own name, THAT is what destroys the Constitution and rule of law. And that is exactly what Barack Obama has done. So go blow your own gauntlet bubba.
damned missing edit function: that’s DFHs.
Is it just me, or are we collecting up an unusual amount of trolletariat lately??
Me thinks someone called in friends and relatives.
Not just you. Slacktivist had a new troll show up, too.
It must be the post-election ‘beat on the DFHs’ period. They all seem to have a memo about how little we tried and how wonderful Mr O is.
Politicians can’t steal if there are no wars.
Does anyone remember “Calvin” in the comic strips. He had a “transmorgifier”. This was a machine that transformed people. Maybe our president went through one and that’s why he is so different from what we thought he would be.