I'm against our involvement in Libya for sure. Strikes in "countries" such as Yemen and Afghanistan with drones are a different story for me. I'm not for innocent people dying at all but I realize that this is unlikely to end. I'm for individual evaluations of each possible strike but not an outright end to them.
Indefinite detention and the killing of US citizens by the US government are two things I am completely against.
@ClipperNation, I'm Ron Paul all the way. Since people are so impressed with zingers rather than truth, that line pretty much makes sense considering Obamas lies about how he cares so deeply about young ones in the Middle East. Imagine if Ron Paul were in the debates with a line like that. The world would be blown away lol.
I don't know if he's lying about caring about the people of the middle east. I don't agree with many aspects of his foreign policy but there's no need to try to make him into some evil sociopath. I'm pretty sure that the innocent lives lost in American military actions weigh on the minds of every President who's ever ordered the military action that caused their deaths.
Well, actions speak louder than words, and by sabre-rattling for more wars in the Middle East, neither candidate seems to care too deeply about the lives of innocent people in that region, tbh.... if those deaths really rested that deeply on Presidents, we would still have cons utional deliberations on and declarations of war, we wouldn't be starving people with sanctions, and we would only be using war as the absolute last resort....
You seem to think that its either or when in reality there are components to the equation outside of simply innocent casualties in the middle east. Sanctions are in place but those sanctions aren't in place for fun. They're there to achieve goals that are meant to protect the safety of other groups of people. You can argue whether this is the most effective way to proceed or not but Obma and other presidents aren't killing innocents in the middle east for fun.
An inability to acknowledge the variety of competing interests in the region that lead to these actions is intellectually dishonest. Our foreign policy in that region is complicated and while I would argue that our decisions cause us more trouble than its worth the majority of the time I don't think its due to malice from our leaders.
Ron Paul would beat the out of Obamney on foreign policy in a debate. Ron Paul would call out Obamney on supporting the Patriot Act, the NDAA, drone attacks, nation building, and being the policemen of the world.
The Cons utional lawyer and Peace President..
those drones are awesome!
How Team Obama Justifies the Killing of a 16-Year-Old American
Asked about the strike that killed him, a senior adviser to the president's campaign suggests he should've "had a more responsible father."
How does Team Obama justify killing him?
The answer Gibbs gave is chilling:
ADAMSON: ...It's an American citizen that is being targeted without due process, without trial. And, he's underage. He's a minor.Again, note that this kid wasn't killed in the same drone strike as his father. He was hit by a drone strike elsewhere, and by the time he was killed, his father had already been dead for two weeks. Gibbs nevertheless defends the strike, not by arguing that the kid was a threat, or that killing him was an accident, but by saying that his late father irresponsibly joined al Qaeda terrorists. Killing an American citizen without due process on that logic ought to be grounds for impeachment. Is that the real answer? Or would the Obama Administration like to clarify its reasoning? Any Congress that respected its oversight responsibilities would get to the bottom of this.
GIBBS: I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don't think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...erican/264028/
Team Obama's Justification For Killing A 16-Year-Old American In A Drone Strike Is Stunning
Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to President Obama's reelection campaign, recently became the first person on Team Obama to address the killing of 16-year-old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, Conor Friedersdorf of the The Atlantic reports.
Abdulrahman was the son of New Mexico-born cleric and al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Alwaki. Both were killed in separate drone strikes last year.
A reporter asked Gibbs: "Do you think that the killing of Anwar al-Alwaki's 16-year-old son, who was an American citizen, is justifiable?"
Here is Gibbs' answer:
"I'm not going to get into Anwar al-Alwaki's son … I would suggest that you have a far more responsible father if they're truly concerned about the well being of your children. I don't think becoming an al-Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business."
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a FOIA request for information regarding the legal and factual basis for the targeted killings of the al-Alwakis and another U.S. citizen who was killed with Anwar al-Alwaki.
The video below shows Gibbs being asked about President Obama's secret kill list. The al-Alwaki question is asked at 1:55.
================================================== ================================================== ================================
Why Losing Indefinite Detention Powers Would Be A Disaster For Obama
There's a big story by Greg Miller in the Washington Post on how the Obama administration has expanded its powers in the War on Terror.
Miller notes that the legal foundation for U.S. counterterrorism strategy is partially based on "the Congressional authorization to use military force" (AUMF) that was passed after 9/11.
Specifically it seems to be based on an interpretation of the AUMF that was "reaffirmed" by the indefinite detention clause of the NationalDefense Authorization Act (NDAA).
This explains why Obama is fighting so hard to keep the indefinite detention clause in effect.
In court the government argued that the indefinite detention clause is simply a "reaffirmation" of the Authorization Use Of Military Force (AUMF), which gives the president authority "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those ... [who] aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001 or harbored such organizations or persons." In the NDAA lawsuit, the government argued that the NDAA §1021 is simply an "affirmation" or "reaffirmation" of the AUMF.
But the NDAA adds language to the AUMF when it says "The President also has the authority to detain persons who were part of or substantially supported, Taliban or al-Qaida forces or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act, or has directly supported hostilities, in the aid of such enemy forces."
That extra part is what Judge Katherine Forrest ruled uncons utionally vague. And since Judge Forrest was careful to protect the AUMF in her permanent injunction, the government should be OK with that decision if the AUMF and NDAA indefinite detention powers are precisely the same.
Tangerine Bolen, an activist and plaintiff on the NDAA lawsuit, told us that the government's reaction raised "significant red flags" that the indefinite detention clause is "a retroactive legislative fix ...[that] allows them to continue to arbitrarily apply indefinite detention to whomever they wish, whenever they wish, for whatever reasons they wish without being held accountable."
Thus a victory for the plaintiffs in the NDAA lawsuit would strike down unjustified indefinite detention powers that the government has been claiming for years.
"Our lawsuit is the lock on Pandora's box," Bolen said. "And Pandora's box is the overly broad application of the AUMF… [Blocking NDAA §1021] is to suddenly and sharply delimit powers upon which President Obama has come to rely wrongfully. He never should've had these powers. Bush never should've had these powers."
The Post notes that critics of Obama's secret drone war argue that its legal justifications have become much weaker as "the drone campaign has expanded far beyond the core group of al-Qaeda operatives ... [and] officials see an array of emerging threats beyond Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia — the three countries where almost all U.S. drone strikes have occurred."
Bolen argues that the "irreparable harm" is that the permanent injunction would be "exposing illegal activities for the last decade. It could have such a set of ripple consequences: we could see people in the Bush administration, Obama administration and security agencies be investigated for how they have applied the AUMF. Obama could finally be forced to release all the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay who have been cleared for years. It's an incredible headache for him."
Last edited by SA210; 10-24-2012 at 10:27 PM.
Obama is a disaster on civil liberties.
lol His son was NOT with him at all, his son was killed in a different strike entirely 2 weeks later along with other kids while eating dinner outside.
These people are not qualified to hold their positions.
And so the Gecko/Ryan and the Repugs will overturn the NDAA and cancel Petraeus' SOCOM international murder gang? no. They won't touch it.
NDAA/SOCOM are indefensible, but to vote in Gecko/Ryan to punish Barry will only get you Gecko installing oil-thirsty, blood-thirsty imperial PNAC/dubya/ head neocons running foreign/MIC policy.
neither will Obama, if re-elected.
I'm not voting for evil Mitt either, never was. Barry and Mitt are basically the same when it comes to illegal war and civil liberties. We are screwed no matter which one of them is elected. As long as people want to continue only arguing senseless red team/blue team talking points and ignoring these more important issues, no change will happen.
If you are on the "left" you should be absolutely furious over the murder of a 16 year old American citizen without charge, trial, due process, etc.. by the President, and you should be even more furious at the comment that he should've had a better father as an excuse.
Had Bush done this as President right now, Dems would be all over it on this board. My my, how things have changed.
Last edited by SA210; 10-25-2012 at 04:42 AM.
The remarkable, unfathomable ignorance of Debbie Wasserman Schultz
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/20/wasserman-schultz-kill-list
Robert Gibb's horrible comments getting more attention. Will it hit mainstream media?
This should immediately end Obama's campaign if the country really knew about all of this and if the msm focused on it as they should be doing, but it won't.
And the moron on the other side would do the same .
TYT does a great story here..Cenk really looks bothered, as we all should be.
I bet a Gecko $10,000 that Gecko/Ryan will not stop nor deny funding for drone/SOCOM assassinations, which would be OK to wildly popular here with right-wingers.
Now on Yahoo News..let's see where else it goes..
==============================================
Drone of silence: the national-security policy that Obama and Romney won’t debate
Robert Gibbs was holding court in the press room at last week’s second presidential debate at Hofstra University. The former White House press secretary turned senior adviser to the Obama campaign had a single-minded mission of boosting the president to quote-obsessed reporters. So it is easy to imagine Gibbs’ exasperation when he began being hectored by video journalists from the activist group We Are Change.
Their recently released three-minute video of the encounter is mostly familiar footage of a campaign mouthpiece trying to deflect off-message questions from unknown reporters. Asked about drone attacks, Gibbs retreated to the kind of non-responsive answer that he used to deliver from the lectern in the White House press room: “When there are people who are trying to harm us -- and have pledged to bring terror to these shores -- we've taken that fight to them."
What came next is what makes this press room face-off sadly emblematic of larger truths. The question involved the drone killing a year ago in Yemen of a United States citizen, the 16-year-old son of American-born cleric and al-Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki.
This was Gibbs’ cold-blooded answer about the lesson from this murder from the skies: “I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well-being of their children. I don’t think becoming an al-Qaida jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.”
All the perfumes of Arabia will not wash that one away.
Yes, Gibbs was provoked. And he has not held a governmental role since he left the White House in early 2011. (At the time, Barack Obama praised Gibbs, who was earning $172,200 a year, for “going 24/7 with relatively modest pay”). So these ghoulish pick-your-parents-carefully comments by Gibbs were not a statement of official administration policy.
Yet Gibbs was one of Obama’s closest advisers during the early days of the administration when the president began personally picking the suspected terrorists who would be targeted by drone attacks. So Gibbs is familiar with the presidential rationale for these targeted killings and the collateral damage that sometimes accompanies them. As a result, Gibbs’ answer carries more policy weight than, say, a response from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who chairs the Democratic National Committee.
The mindset surrounding the drone attacks is analogous to Richard Nixon’s declaration, “When the president does it, that means that it’s not illegal.” In this case, Gibbs was saying, in effect, “When the president kills you with a drone strike, that means you are a terrorist.” And if you are an American citizen like the 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, then you too are fair game...
Except that this teenager was not with his father when he died in 2011. As Tom Junod reported in Esquire, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki had not seen his father in two years and was searching for him -- haunted as many boys are by the missing imprint of a male parent. Given the blanket of executive secrecy surrounding the president’s kill list, we do not know why the group of relatives and friends that he was eating dinner with by the side of the road was targeted by a drone.
http://news.yahoo.com/drone-of-silen...-10251296.html
Any right-wingers here think Gecko/Ryan overturn NDAA, Patriot Act, FISA, ground all the drones, fire Petraeus/SOCOM?
There won't be any of Gecko's highly original "Big Change" in any of these activities, except for the worse. So voting against Barry to punish him will only get the same and more of the same, plus bombing Iran, from Gecko and his neocons.
But yet, voting for Barry will also only end up getting us at least 4 more years of NDAA, Patriot Act, FISA, drones, and SOCOM....
Voting for Gecko will get the same and his neocons will certainly make it all worse.
Good thing I'm writing in Ron Paul instead of voting for either of those bums....
I don't know about you, but there is no question in my mind that Barry will attack Iran..not much of a difference than Romney.
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