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Agree. De able.
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/08/repu...ive_hypocrisy/During the Bush years, Guantanamo was the core symbol of right-wing radicalism and what was back then referred to as the “assault on American values and the shredding of our Cons ution”: so much so then when Barack Obama ran for President, he featured these issues not as a secondary but as a central plank in his campaign. But now that there is a Democrat in office presiding over Guantanamo and these other polices — rather than a big, bad, scary Republican — all of that has changed, as a new Washington Post/ABC News poll today demonstrates:
The sharpest edges of President Obama’s counterterrorism policy, including the use of drone aircraft to kill suspected terrorists abroad and keeping open the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have broad public support, including from the left wing of the Democratic Party.Repulsive liberal hypocrisy extends far beyond the issue of Guantanamo. A core plank in the Democratic critique of the Bush/Cheney civil liberties assault was the notion that the President could do whatever he wants, in secret and with no checks, to anyone he accuses without trial of being a Terrorist – even including eavesdropping on their communications or detaining them without due process. But President Obama has not only done the same thing, but has gone much farther than mere eavesdropping or detention: he has asserted the power even to kill citizens without due process. As Bush’s own CIA and NSA chief Michael Hayden said this week about the Awlaki assassination: “We needed a court order to eavesdrop on him but we didn’t need a court order to kill him. Isn’t that something?” That is indeed “something,” as is the fact that Bush’s mere due-process-free eavesdropping on and detention of American citizens caused such liberal outrage, while Obama’s due-process-free execution of them has not.
A new Washington Post-ABC News pollshows that Obama, who campaigned on a pledge to close the brig at Guantanamo Bay and to change national security policies he criticized as inconsistent with U.S. law and values, has little to fear politically for failing to live up to all of those promises.
The survey shows that 70 percent of respondents approve of Obama’s decision to keep open the prison at Guantanamo Bay. . . . The poll shows that 53 percent of self-identified liberal Democrats — and 67 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats — support keeping Guantanamo Bay open, even though it emerged as a symbol of the post-Sept. 11 national security policies of George W. Bush, which many liberals bitterly opposed.
Beyond that, Obama has used drones to kill Muslim children and innocent adults by the hundreds. He has refused to disclose his legal arguments for why he can do this or to justify the attacks in any way. He has even had rescuers and funeral mourners deliberately targeted. As Hayden said: ”Right now, there isn’t a government on the planet that agrees with our legal rationale for these operations, except for Afghanistan and maybe Israel.” But that is all perfectly fine with most American liberals now that their Party’s Leader is doing it:
Fully 77 percent of liberal Democrats endorse the use of drones, meaning that Obama is unlikely to suffer any political consequences as a result of his policy in this election year. Support for drone strikes against suspected terrorists stays high, dropping only somewhat when respondents are asked specifically about targeting American citizens living overseas, as was the case with Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni American killed in September in a drone strike in northern Yemen.The Post‘s Greg Sargent obtained the breakdown on these questions and wrote today:
The number of those who approve of the drone strikes drops nearly 20 percent when respondents are told that the targets are American citizens. But that 65 percent is still a very big number, given that these policies really should be controversial.
And get this: Depressingly, Democrats approve of the drone strikes on American citizens by 58-33, and even liberals approve of them, 55-35. Those numbers were provided to me by the Post polling team.
It’s hard to imagine that Dems and liberals would approve of such policies in quite these numbers if they had been authored by George W. Bush.
Agree. De able.
Greenwald has become a one-buggy horse....
The devil is in the details....Obama is 100% for closing Gitmo, the trouble is what do you do to the prisoners, the worst of the worst by some accounts, who are still there? No other nation wants them, if you send them back to the country of origin they don't want them either, or they will rejoin the war in Afghanistan and Iraq...Congress has restricted Obama from bringing them to the U.S., even though some states have offered to hold them....we can play this game another 4 years or come up with an effective plan to either rehabilitate these guys or eliminate them.....but lets quit lying about Gitmo and Obama...The survey shows that 70 percent of respondents approve of Obama’s decision to keep open the prison at Guantanamo Bay. . . . The poll shows that 53 percent of self-identified liberal Democrats — and 67 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats — support keeping Guantanamo Bay open, even though it emerged as a symbol of the post-Sept. 11 national security policies of George W. Bush, which many liberals bitterly opposed.
I wasn't here for the Bush days. Was Dan a hater of harsh, authoritarian practices he apologizes for now, or has he always been for them?
Rumsfeld said all the guys they let go (about 75%) were the worst of the worst, too.
Do you believe everything your government says?
If the Gitmo boys are so nasty, why haven't they been tried in a military or other kangaroo court? no evidence? just hearsay?
Gitmo, TSA theatrical harassment, etc, etc, prove how -scared weak America is, imagining boogeymen and their unlimted power to destroy America (while the 1% is really the boogeyman and is left free to trash America non-stop).
This is definitely a massive flip flop for Dan...
Which specific authoritarian practice am I apologizing for again?
Have the mass civilian arrests by Obama begun yet?
if I recall aright enabling legislation which you not only approved but defended against critics, was recently passed. (NDAA) Just now you apologized for Gitmo in Rumsfeldian way.
Do those count?
The Bushies said the same thing.
Sad that political leaders are always judged more by their speeches than actions by their voting bloc. Uncle Tom has been a disgrace to this nation.
Maybe Obama knows something now that he didn't know in his community organizing days.
due process for Americans got too expensive for Darrin, based on the mere surmise that some justification for curtailing them exists in secret briefings.
Darrin not only trusts big government to keep us safe, he apologizes in advance for any traditional American liberties it may violate in so doing.
How generous and trusting Darrin is of big government is when it comes to security...
Last edited by Winehole23; 02-13-2012 at 10:34 AM.
He certainly knows that his own party developed a severe case of the NIMBY-ies once talk of relocating the gitmo detainees came up......
It was the REPUGS, not the Dems, who screamed like about moving Gitmo people to high-security prisons on US soil, saying that would make the prisons targets for Islamic terrorism, which apparently is totally unstoppable ( head: "not if, but when")
Oh republicans screamed alright, but they didn't have the power to do anything about it. Yet it still didn't get done. At the end of the day, leaving gitmo open had widespread bi-partisan support.
and the Dems folded faster than a card table. gutlessness never wins.
the REPUGS have the power and hate media attack dogs to spew paranoia and fear-monger to their ignorant base, to power to intimidate, etc, etc. It worked. Repugs obstruct ANYTHING Obama and Dems want to do.
The dems didn't want to close gitmo. If they did, it would have been done already.
All hail the omnipotent GOP.
Guantanamo Ten Years Later: "It's a Disgrace," Says Expert Andy Worthington
Brad Jacobson: Is the US government any closer to closing the Guantanamo Bay prison today than it was five years ago?
Andy Worthington: No. In fact, it's worse than it was five years ago. President Bush was pretty much free to come up with diplomatic arrangements with various countries to release prisoners. It was a pretty straightforward process once they made their decisions they didn't want to hold people. It's become incredibly complicated under President Obama. And I would say that that started with his lack of caution.
He first of all said: "Here's an executive order, We're going to close Guantanamo in a year." And then he didn't do anything. He set up a task force to review the cases. They went through it all very carefully; they were conscious they didn't want to make any mistakes. And during that time, in the absence of any public activity, it allowed his critics to start gathering. It allowed the Republicans to realize that they could pick up and dust off the old fear card that Cheney had been so good at playing and start spreading negative propaganda about Guantanamo.
And over the last few years, what's happened is that, over and over again, Congress has enacted legislation to tie the president's hands on Guantanamo, preventing him from buying or adapting a prison on the US mainland to bring the prisoners to, preventing him from bringing prisoners to the US mainland to, first of all, face a trial, and, then, for any reason at all. Plus the kind of really crazy provisions that have been made in the last year - to demand that the secretary of defense certify that it's safe to release prisoners, for example.
The administration was also prohibited from releasing a prisoner to a country where there was a single alleged case of recidivism, of somebody allegedly returning to the battlefield.
The other problem is that the very right-wing judges in the DC circuit courts, for very plainly ideological reasons, have been revising the detention rules and the requirements for the habeas pe ions to make sure that no prisoners get to leave Guantanamo by any legal means.
The rest of it is Obama's own failings, and severe and unprincipled opposition from Congress.
http://www.truth-out.org/guantanamo-...ington/1328120
you saw the vote totals...still blaming it on the Repugs? They don't push the buttons for Dems on votes...
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