Remember those heady days after 9/11 when all the Republicans had to do to win an election was invoke Osama Bin Laden or the Twin Towers? Well, John Boehner certainly does.
This is Exhibit A in the intellectual bankruptcy of the GOP. On the major questions of the day - the banking/economic crisis, the healthcare crisis, the energy/climate crisis - they have no answers. They quite literally have nothing to say except for no. Well, that's not entirely true: they still recycle their old talking points, insisting that cutting corporate and capital gains taxes will be an economic panacea; that every American has adequate healthcare since they can go the ER; and that despite all scientific evidence to the contrary, global warming is not man-made.
So what's left for the Republican party? Answer: trying to scare the crap out of people. Unfortunately for them, it's not 2002 anymore. Voters by and large rejected this type of crass fearmongering during the past election, when conservatives played on fears that Barack Hussein Obama was a Muslim-terrorist-communist. But Boehner & Co. did not get the memo. Either did not notice that these scare tactics have lost their effectiveness, or it's simply all they know or have left at this point. It's a sad commentary on a pathetic political movement.
Showing posts with label Waterboarding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Waterboarding. Show all posts
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Condi Rice Needs A Lawyer...
Because the "it's-not-illegal-if-the-president-tells-you-to-do-it" defense does not work. Ask Nixon officials.
There's a lot of BS and specious reasoning to unpack here. The three points that really stand out, though, are her implication that Al Qaeda was a more significant threat after 9/11 than Nazi Germany was during World War II because Al Qaeda attacked our "homeland", that the Guantanamo was a model prison, and that waterboarding is not torture because the President said it would not be so defined.
As to the first point: yes, Nazi Germany did not attack the "homeland", but her ally Imperial Japan did. Or is Hawaii too exotic to count? The Nazis also tried to develop nuclear weapons, and would have used them given the opportunity. Oh, and between the two of them, Germany and Japan controlled nearly half the world, not a few caves in an ungovernable corner of the world. The Axis really did pose an existential threat to the United States; Al Qaeda does not. Frankly, this is an embarrassing argument for a professor of international relations to make.
Her claim that Guantanamo was a model prison is laughably disingenuous. As Scott Horton points out, the OSCE report Rice cited that described Guantanamo as a "model medium security prison" referred only to the physical facilities. The same report referred to the treatment of the prisoners as torture.
Reviving the Nixonion "it's-not-illegal-when-the-president-does-it" defense is pathetic. That the president got unscrupulous lawyers to write a memo saying that torture is not torture does not make it legal. If this is the best justification she has for assenting to the torture archipelago the Bush administration instituted, then she needs a lawyer. And she should probably stop giving interviews - especially to non-media people who will actually ask tough questions.
There's a lot of BS and specious reasoning to unpack here. The three points that really stand out, though, are her implication that Al Qaeda was a more significant threat after 9/11 than Nazi Germany was during World War II because Al Qaeda attacked our "homeland", that the Guantanamo was a model prison, and that waterboarding is not torture because the President said it would not be so defined.
As to the first point: yes, Nazi Germany did not attack the "homeland", but her ally Imperial Japan did. Or is Hawaii too exotic to count? The Nazis also tried to develop nuclear weapons, and would have used them given the opportunity. Oh, and between the two of them, Germany and Japan controlled nearly half the world, not a few caves in an ungovernable corner of the world. The Axis really did pose an existential threat to the United States; Al Qaeda does not. Frankly, this is an embarrassing argument for a professor of international relations to make.
Her claim that Guantanamo was a model prison is laughably disingenuous. As Scott Horton points out, the OSCE report Rice cited that described Guantanamo as a "model medium security prison" referred only to the physical facilities. The same report referred to the treatment of the prisoners as torture.
Reviving the Nixonion "it's-not-illegal-when-the-president-does-it" defense is pathetic. That the president got unscrupulous lawyers to write a memo saying that torture is not torture does not make it legal. If this is the best justification she has for assenting to the torture archipelago the Bush administration instituted, then she needs a lawyer. And she should probably stop giving interviews - especially to non-media people who will actually ask tough questions.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Waterboarding Is Torture
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Keith Olbermann at his sanctimonious best. Yes: waterboarding is torture. It always has and it always will be. Getting a lawyer to write a speciously reasoned memo asserting that waterboarding is not torture does not change this fact. Sadly, this needs to be said.
Update: As usual, Andrew Sullivan forcefully argues that waterboarding is torture, and the failure of the media to speak its name as such is an abdication of their responsibilities. Money quote:
In the face of this, are there any legal decisions, judgments or trials in the last five centuries in which waterboarding has not been deemed torture? None that I am aware of. And this is not surprising. If waterboarding someone 183 times is not torture, then nothing is torture.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
