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The first sign of economic trouble, we're bending over for Wall Street with a blank check for at least $700 large large.
The first sign of terrorism, we're taking off our shoes and bending over for the TSA.
We faced down nuclear armageddon with the USSR. Now we cower before that?
The first sign of economic trouble, we're bending over for Wall Street with a blank check for at least $700 large large.
The first sign of terrorism, we're taking off our shoes and bending over for the TSA.
Yes. If the Christmas bomber had managed more than to catch his drawers on fire, I think any hope of a return to sanity would have been gone.
A free society results in things which could have been prevented had there been a police state. We eschew the police state in order to enjoy...a free society. But consider that the people are conditioned to an extent to which the police state seems rather sensible, not to mention patriotic.
Think about all that was spawned with that:
- Afghanistan invasion
- Iraq invasion
- Preemptive attack 'doctrine'
- TSA
- Clandestine NSA wiretaps
- Extraordinary rendition
- Gitmo
- Patriot Act
- National Security Letters
- Telecom immunity
- Military commissions
And I'm probably missing one or two...
How about the unitary executive theory, or King for a day, week, month, year, decade.....
Actually, I find aggravating that Congress went line, hook and sinker with it all. I still remember that if you didn't, you were 'soft on terror'...
Soft on liberty, more like.
I don't want this to be lost before SnC answers.
American dumb s are/have been duped into being spineless chicken s, who strut around like ass-kicking mofos, by fear-mongering Repugs.
The Chicken Little bit isn't a GOP exclusive. Consider the TARP.
I'd say you got it backwards. The GOP got to where it did by appealing to a broad swath of American dumb s, among them those people whose only real stupidity was believing in unsustainable economic practices.
When you seek security then you have to give up some of your freedoms. The more secure you want to be the less freedom you have. Case in point - I was in Israel in '92 and it took almost three hours to get through customs. They checked every bag and asked everyone questions regarding things like - did someone give you something to take back to America and mail it for them? But after the hijackings that that nation went through I really couldn't have blamed them at the time. Still don't. At the same time you couldn't leave a bag unattended in the Paris airport or the bomb squad would nave been called in to dispose of it. But I thought to myself that this would never happen in the USA. How times have changed!
As MB implied (IMHO) a free society has to endure the 9/11s that eventually happen. Yes, some measures need to be taken in order to prevent a future 9/11 but that becomes the slippery slope doesn't it?
To what extent do we go to stop another 9/11?
How much liberty is sacrificed in order to feel safe and secure?
Can there be or is there a balance that can be had between the two where most are satisfied with the end results?
Right now this nation is struggling with those questions and the implications for future Americans. When people get frightened they want to feel safe and secure. They want the powers that be to go out and get those who did 'em wrong. Just look at Nazi Germany to see what can happen when most citizens turn a blind eye to this issue. The Nazis wanted Germans to know it was those damn Jews that caused the economic problems in Germany. Then it was the gysies and then came the Chritian ministers who condemmed what was happeneing and then anyone who spoke out against the regime and...etc. Though most will be able to tell you that 6 million Jews died under the Nazi regime many can't tell that the same number of non-Jews did also. Some may say that I'm overreacting but I don't think so. As mentioned previously it's that slippery slope situation. We let a little of this go and then the next generation gets comfortable with what has gone before them and then they let a little more go and so on.
Damn just look at our tax situation - the 16th amendment. It started at 2%!!! 2! But when the money rolled in the politicans couldn't believe their eyes at all the dough they got to spend and it spiraled upwards from then on.
People get comfortable with their surroundings and rationalize them.
They think it won't happen to them.
The other guy probably deserved it. Even if it was your neighbor.
That's why we must address what is torture and what isn't and it's implications toward our freedoms and security. Some say that waterboarding isn't but isn't it simulated drowning? The Spanish Inquisition used it though not in the form that the US did. And isn't the Spanish Inquisition notoriously known for it's torture methods? But others disagree.
Vigilance my fellow citizens.
"people whose only real stupidity was believing in unsustainable economic practices."
head is STILL fear mongering, as of yesterday, as have been all conservatives and Repugs since they allowed 9/11 to happen.
Fear mongering is an excuse to waste money enriching "security" business, to waste 10s of 1000s of lives and $Ts in bogus wars.
shoe bombers and underpants bombers are simply NOT NATIONAL SECURITY THREATS.
Blowing up WTC didn't even threaten all of Manhattan, never mind threatening all of USA.
Russia with all its nukes WAS a national security threat (if the CIA didn't lie about those nukes and Russia's delivery capability. CIA/NSA were of course most interested in hyping security threats because it assured them of job security)
America's biggest security threat in internal, AMericans kill more Americans than any foreigners, Wall St impoverishes more Americans than any tax collector.
I agree. Partisan hacks like Greenwald never lose a chance of politicizing this issue and trying to make it a "one vs. us" thing. They have little reason to complain about the monster they created.
Pfff.
This is a very good point. Both sides would rather blow trillions of dollars than admit stupidity...I mean err.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...0a4_story.htmlAmerica must atone for the torture it inflicted
By Thomas R. Pickering, Published: April 16
Thomas R. Pickering is a member of the Cons ution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment. He was undersecretary of state for political affairs from 1997 to 2001 and served as ambassador and representative to the United Nations from 1989 to 1992.
It’s never easy in this volatile world to advance America’s strategic aims. For more than four decades, in the service of Democratic and Republican presidents, it was often my job to persuade foreign governments to adhere to international law and observe the highest standards of conduct in human rights — including the strict prohibition of torture. A report released Tuesday by an independent task force on detainee treatment (to which I contributed) makes it clear that U.S. officials could have used the same advice.
Unfortunately, the U.S. government’s use of torture against suspected terrorists, and its failure to fully acknowledge and condemn it, has made the exercise of diplomacy far more daunting. By authorizing and permitting torture in response to a global terrorist threat, U.S. leaders committed a grave error that has undermined our values, principles and moral stature; eroded our global influence; and placed our soldiers, diplomats and intelligence officers in even greater jeopardy.
America to planet: Do As We Dictate, Not As We Do
in 2008 thread people would parse it for days. now it passes unremarked on.
I think it's one of those "burn the tape" moments...
no need to burn the tape if it's ignored to begin with..
This is what happens when definitions of words get watered down.
nah, it's what happens when values get watered down.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...terrorism-iranIt's hardly news that the US ins uted and for years maintained a systematic torture regime, but the success of the Obama administration in blocking all judicial proceedings has meant there has been no official decree that this is so. A comprehensive report just issued by a truly bipartisan group of former high-level Washington officials (including military officials) is as close as we are likely to get to such an official proclamation.
The Report explains that the impetus behind it was that "the Obama administration declined, as a matter of policy, to undertake or commission an official study of what happened, saying it was unproductive to 'look backwards' rather than forward." It concludes - in unblinking and definitive fashion - that "it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture"; this finding is "offered without reservation"; it is "not based on any impressionistic approach" but rather "grounded in a thorough and detailed examination of what cons utes torture in many contexts, notably historical and legal"; and "the nation's highest officials bear some responsibility for allowing and contributing to the spread of torture." It also debunks the popular claim that torture was confined to three cases of waterboarding, do enting that more than three people were subjected to that tactic and that the torture includes far more than just waterboarding.
This is not only a historical disgrace for the US and the responsible officials, but, as the New York Times article on this report inadvertently suggests, also shames two other ins utions:
(1) the New York Times itself, which steadfastly refused to use the word "torture" to describe what was being done (unless it was done by other countries) and continues to justify that refusal through its then-Executive Editor Bill Keller (Andrew Sullivan ably demolishes Keller's reasoning, while the paper's public editor, Margaret Sullivan, wrote this week that this choice merits "some ins utional soul-searching"); and,The disgrace of the American torture regime falls on Bush officials and secondarily the media and political ins utions that acquiesced to it, but the full-scale protection of those war crimes (and the denial of justice to their victims) falls squarely on the Obama administration.
(2) President Obama, who barred all criminal prosecutions for Bush officials and other torturers and thus brazenly violated at least the spirit and probably the letter of the Convention Against Torture. That treaty, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 (exactly 25 years ago to the day: Happy Anniversary!), compels all signatories who discover credible allegations that government officials have participated or been complicit in torture to "submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution" (Art. 7(1)). It also specifically states that "no exceptional cir stances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture" and "an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture" (Art. 2 (2-3)).
There is an agreement with each new Pres not to go after the preceding.
Clinton didn't go after St Ronnie/Pappy of Central America genocide and iran- contra arms/drugs dealing
Barry followed the tradition.
the only way to prosecute dubya, head, rummy, condi was for citizens to sue them while they were in office. I suppose citizens can still do that.
Since they are private citizens, would taxpayers be stuck with the bags' legal defense?
o rly?There is an agreement with each new Pres not to go after the preceding.
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