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-   -   We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about! (http://www.lawtalkers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=824)

Hank Chinaski 01-25-2009 12:00 PM
Re: We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 378899)
I love his Rockin' New Years Eve, but I think we can all agree - Ryan Seacrest has to go.
when Howard Stern plays the Dick Clark New Year's eve stuff is it cruel?

sebastian_dangerfield 01-25-2009 12:04 PM
Re: We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 378901)
when Howard Stern plays the Dick Clark New Year's eve stuff is it cruel?
No, but when CNN plays his harrumphing, self-aggrandizing senate testimony, yes.

To the viewing audience.

Sidd Finch 01-25-2009 02:14 PM
Re: We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 378884)
so you think the better response to an attack, say the Cole, is to not strike anyone back? I mean I'm ready to move on, but if you want to play, en guarde!
The Iraq war was payback for the attack on the Cole?

Or are you saying that, since Clinton didn't attack enough countries after the Cole*, Bush had to restore our military-karmic balance by attacking too many?




*Since, y'know, all the Rs were advocating greater use of military force under Clinton. Uh-huh. Wag the dog and all that.

Sidd Finch 01-25-2009 02:16 PM
Re: We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 378895)
If you credit Clarke's combination of prescience and hindsight, then the problem was not in the White House, but in the FBI, CIA and military. If you don't, then the problem was that we didn't have enough solid information to tie to bombing to al Qaeda. Either way, the problem was not that Clinton's White House gave the wrong advice.

Why didn't Clinton just attack Iraq?


(Oh, wait -- I know. Because he was busy actually neutralizing any threat that Saddam posed, without actually dragging us into a worthless quagmire. Right?)

Sidd Finch 01-25-2009 02:19 PM
Re: We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 378896)
the White house gives orders, not advice.


edit: you can put all the gloss you want on clinton's non-actions to make them wise. they weren't wise. we know that now. he should have invaded afghanistan or at least bombed the shit out of it. BUT there was no drive to do it until 9/11, so he gets a pass from me. after 9/11 leaving a potentially greater risk standing was surely not acceptable. you can argue (and I won't engage) over whether Iraq should have been seen as such a risk, but I have never seen any motive for Bush to fake how he came down on the question. They thought it a real potential risk to our security, and make a very hard decision based upon that evaluation.

as I said, we have a new Prez. lets stop talking about the past and see how perfectly he decides every real and terrible decision he faces.

I agree with Hank. Real men know that you can't learn anything by thinking about the past. 43 sure showed that -- a real man didn't need to ask "hmm.... I wonder why we didn't just take Baghdad in Desert Storm? Maybe they thought assuming control over Iraq would be a bad thing for the US, and maybe they had good reasons for that."

It's time we stop focusing on the past. Except for blaming everything on Clinton, of course.

Tyrone Slothrop 01-25-2009 03:41 PM
Re: We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 378896)
the White house gives orders, not advice.
Yes, well I meant the NSA staff in Clinton's White House. But if the FBI, CIA and military were lined up against, what does the White House do? The FBI and CIA were taking the position that they didn't know it was al Qaeda. Clinton is supposed to order the military to bomb another country when his own intel won't say they're connected? I don't think so.

Quote:
edit: you can put all the gloss you want on clinton's non-actions to make them wise. they weren't wise. we know that now.
To me, the word "wise" suggests that based on the facts and information then available, you think he should have done something different. But you indicate otherwise by saying, "we know that now."

Quote:
he should have invaded afghanistan or at least bombed the shit out of it. BUT there was no drive to do it until 9/11, so he gets a pass from me.
On what basis? We didn't have a casus belli. For that matter, we had no practical way to invade, since none of Afghanistan's neighbors would have cooperated with that.

Quote:
after 9/11 leaving a potentially greater risk standing was surely not acceptable. you can argue (and I won't engage) over whether Iraq should have been seen as such a risk, but I have never seen any motive for Bush to fake how he came down on the question. They thought it a real potential risk to our security, and make a very hard decision based upon that evaluation.
I'm not going to get into Iraq now, except to point out that Clarke's quote about 9/11 shows that influential people in the Administration were looking for a pretext to go after Iraq, and 9/11 gave it to them. As Less says, this is not exactly new information.

Quote:
we have a new Prez. lets stop talking about the past
You were the one who brought Clinton up.

Tyrone Slothrop 01-25-2009 03:53 PM
Locking people up with no files.
 
The incompetence of the Bush Administration is simply breathtaking.

Atticus Grinch 01-25-2009 04:04 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 378912)
The incompetence of the Bush Administration is simply breathtaking.
Hank posts Annie Hall quote in 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . .

Tyrone Slothrop 01-25-2009 04:52 PM
Fiction imitates life.
 
A virtual Icelandic bank run.

sebastian_dangerfield 01-25-2009 06:03 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 378912)
The incompetence of the Bush Administration is simply breathtaking.
He's gone.

Time to get a new fixation.

Greedy,Greedy,Greedy 01-25-2009 06:31 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 378917)
He's gone.

Time to get a new fixation.
It's tough.

The Dems aren't yet off the reservation and the Republicans seem to be embracing their irrelevance. I think we may have to go international to find public figures to mock and ridicule, though even that may be hard because Letterman's already exhausted the bin Laden jokes and there's not going to be a lot of dispute here if we spend all our time mocking Robert Mugabe.

Can Schwarzeneggar do something to save us?

Greedy,Greedy,Greedy 01-25-2009 06:50 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 378918)
It's tough.

The Dems aren't yet off the reservation and the Republicans seem to be embracing their irrelevance. I think we may have to go international to find public figures to mock and ridicule, though even that may be hard because Letterman's already exhausted the bin Laden jokes and there's not going to be a lot of dispute here if we spend all our time mocking Robert Mugabe.

Can Schwarzeneggar do something to save us?
Well, here's something worth ridiculing - Maureen Dowd's defense of appointing a woman whose main credentials were her wardrobe and her father's sperm. I guess Caroline would have represented the "real" NY, you know, the Upper East Side, better than some chick from upstate who doesn't genuflect adequately to Wall Street and the Grey Lady.

Tyrone Slothrop 01-25-2009 06:51 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 378917)
He's gone.

Time to get a new fixation.
Can you believe that there are all these prisoners held at Guantanamo but that there are no files collecting what's known about them? He may be gone, but they're still there.

Greedy,Greedy,Greedy 01-25-2009 07:12 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 378920)
Can you believe that there are all these prisoners held at Guantanamo but that there are no files collecting what's known about them? He may be gone, but they're still there.
Maybe we ought to let Bush start a half-way house at his Crawford Ranch for prisioners with inadequate documentation.

Sidd Finch 01-25-2009 07:47 PM
Re: We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 378910)
Yes, well I meant the NSA staff in Clinton's White House. But if the FBI, CIA and military were lined up against, what does the White House do? The FBI and CIA were taking the position that they didn't know it was al Qaeda. Clinton is supposed to order the military to bomb another country when his own intel won't say they're connected? I don't think so.

He should have made his intel say what he wanted. Their supposed to support the President's policies. Have you learned nothing in 8 years?

Sidd Finch 01-25-2009 07:49 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 378920)
Can you believe that there are all these prisoners held at Guantanamo but that there are no files collecting what's known about them? He may be gone, but they're still there.
That's Obama's fault now. Or maybe Clinton's.

sebastian_dangerfield 01-25-2009 07:53 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 378919)
Well, here's something worth ridiculing - Maureen Dowd's defense of appointing a woman whose main credentials were her wardrobe and her father's sperm. I guess Caroline would have represented the "real" NY, you know, the Upper East Side, better than some chick from upstate who doesn't genuflect adequately to Wall Street and the Grey Lady.
Maureen Dowd's a humorist. Nobody takes her seriously.

sebastian_dangerfield 01-25-2009 08:00 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 378920)
Can you believe that there are all these prisoners held at Guantanamo but that there are no files collecting what's known about them? He may be gone, but they're still there.
Yes. But Obama is shutting the place down.

I have Bush fatigue. I understand the reasons you hate the guy, and of course I was fucking with you, but honestly, earnestly, I can't read another piece about how "nefarious" or "incompetent" he was. It's not that I doubt them or think the points aren't worth hashing. I just feel like I'd rather invest my time in seeing how the new guy goes about fixing the mess. And I'm arrogant enough to think the rest of the country ought to do the same.

We have a guy who's taking quick decisive actions, one of which is shutting down that prison. I think the Bush haters, as credible as many of their gripes have been, should turn the page. I think we all need to forget the man, put him from our minds and reboot the whole govt.

sebastian_dangerfield 01-25-2009 08:06 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 378918)
It's tough.

The Dems aren't yet off the reservation and the Republicans seem to be embracing their irrelevance. I think we may have to go international to find public figures to mock and ridicule, though even that may be hard because Letterman's already exhausted the bin Laden jokes and there's not going to be a lot of dispute here if we spend all our time mocking Robert Mugabe.

Can Schwarzeneggar do something to save us?
Biden. He's comedy's only hope right now.

In a less funny vein, I'm fairly certain John Cornyn will make a massive embarrassment of himself in coming years. And look for that odious twit Henry Waxman to run mad with power and make an ass of himself in those investigations he'll be chairing.

Greedy,Greedy,Greedy 01-25-2009 08:49 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 378928)
Biden. He's comedy's only hope right now.

In a less funny vein, I'm fairly certain John Cornyn will make a massive embarrassment of himself in coming years. And look for that odious twit Henry Waxman to run mad with power and make an ass of himself in those investigations he'll be chairing.
I knew there was a reason Obama picked him.

I'll give you Cornyn, but I don't Waxman is colorful enough. I do think both Senators from Louisiana give us hope for a few yucks over the coming couple of years.

sebastian_dangerfield 01-25-2009 09:18 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 378929)
I knew there was a reason Obama picked him.

I'll give you Cornyn, but I don't Waxman is colorful enough. I do think both Senators from Louisiana give us hope for a few yucks over the coming couple of years.
True. I just hate Waxman, so I can't help ripping on the prick.

Tyrone Slothrop 01-25-2009 09:34 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 378927)
I have Bush fatigue. I understand the reasons you hate the guy, and of course I was fucking with you, but honestly, earnestly, I can't read another piece about how "nefarious" or "incompetent" he was.
I hear you. But we're going to go through a stretch now where we get to find out all sorts of things about how the country has been run lately that weren't public. I react less out of hate and more out of amazement that they could be doing something like that, and then more amazement that I can still be amazed.

Hank Chinaski 01-25-2009 10:12 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 378920)
Can you believe that there are all these prisoners held at Guantanamo but that there are no files collecting what's known about them? He may be gone, but they're still there.
Lawyers were running Gitmo, or is it career people?

taxwonk 01-25-2009 10:19 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 378927)
Yes. But Obama is shutting the place down.

I have Bush fatigue. I understand the reasons you hate the guy, and of course I was fucking with you, but honestly, earnestly, I can't read another piece about how "nefarious" or "incompetent" he was. It's not that I doubt them or think the points aren't worth hashing. I just feel like I'd rather invest my time in seeing how the new guy goes about fixing the mess. And I'm arrogant enough to think the rest of the country ought to do the same.

We have a guy who's taking quick decisive actions, one of which is shutting down that prison. I think the Bush haters, as credible as many of their gripes have been, should turn the page. I think we all need to forget the man, put him from our minds and reboot the whole govt.
Amen.

Tyrone Slothrop 01-25-2009 10:24 PM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 378932)
Lawyers were running Gitmo, or is it career people?
Hello? The Bush Administration? You think lawyers were running anything?

Gattigap 01-25-2009 10:26 PM
We All Took the Red Pill.
 
Oh, s*%$. When I joke that our future dystopia will be encapsulated in either a Schwartzenegger or a Keanu vehicle, I was - well - joking.

PW Singer:

Quote:
The reality is that the human location “in the loop” is already becoming, as retired Army colonel Thomas Adams notes, that of “a supervisor who serves in a fail- safe capacity in the event of a system malfunction.” Even then, he thinks that the speed, confusion, and information overload of modern-day war will soon move the whole process outside “human space.” He describes how the coming weapons “will be too fast, too small, too numerous, and will create an environment too complex for humans to direct.” As Adams concludes, the new technologies “are rapidly taking us to a place where we may not want to go, but probably are unable to avoid.”

The irony is that for all the claims by military, political, and scientific leaders that “humans will always be in the loop,” as far back as 2004 the U.S. Army was carrying out research that demonstrated the merits of armed ground robots equipped with a “quick-draw response.” Similarly, a 2006 study by the Defense Safety Working Group, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, discussed how the concerns over potential killer robots could be allayed by giving “armed autonomous systems” permission to “shoot to destroy hostile weapons systems but not suspected combatants.” That is, they could shoot at tanks and jeeps, just not the people in them. Perhaps most telling is a report that the Joint Forces Command drew up in 2005, which suggested that autonomous robots on the battlefield would be the norm within 20 years. Its title is somewhat amusing, given the official line one usually hears: Unmanned Effects: Taking the Human Out of the Loop.

So, despite what one article called “all the lip service paid to keeping a human in the loop,” auton*omous armed robots are coming to war. They simply make too much sense to the people who matter.

Hank Chinaski 01-26-2009 12:03 AM
Re: We All Took the Red Pill.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gattigap (Post 378935)
Oh, s*%$. When I joke that our future dystopia will be encapsulated in either a Schwartzenegger or a Keanu vehicle, I was - well - joking.

PW Singer:
the "norm?" there is one country, maybe two or three tops, that will have anything like that.

Hank Chinaski 01-26-2009 12:04 AM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 378934)
Hello? The Bush Administration? You think lawyers were running anything?
go back and read again. career people or political appointees?

Hank Chinaski 01-26-2009 12:06 AM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 378931)
I hear you. But we're going to go through a stretch now where we get to find out all sorts of things about how the country has been run lately that weren't public. I react less out of hate and more out of amazement that they could be doing something like that, and then more amazement that I can still be amazed.
straight question. how can you be so sure of the norm in seemingly every aspect of federal Government?

Secret_Agent_Man 01-26-2009 12:46 AM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 378932)
Lawyers were running Gitmo, or is it career people?
Hank --

The political appointees at the highest levels set policy for Gitmo. Period. The career guys did what the fuck they were told, as required by law and our constitution, for as long as they could stomach it.

If you're interested, there was a piece in the WaPo today talking about the difference between the first 100 days or so of Gitmo when the Marine JTF set it up and basically ran it with relatively little interference and began cooperating with the ICRC, and the way the place changed after that when Rumsfeld began to get very pissed that they weren't getting enough "actionable intelligence" from the prisoners.

I know no one wants to talk about his anymore, but I think Don Rumsfeld is in the top 3 list of major Bush mistakes.

I know a few people who were involved with Gitmo -- and they all got the fuck out of it as soon as they could. The biggest reasons we can't prosecute so many of the remaining guys is: (a) There is shit-poor evidence against many of them; and (b) the way a number of them were abused to get the statements and evidence we have.

Sure, we had tough choices, but I don't see a goddamn thing to be proud of there.

S_A_M

Penske_Account 01-26-2009 01:06 AM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 378919)
Well, here's something worth ridiculing - Maureen Dowd's defense of appointing a woman whose main credentials were her wardrobe and her father's sperm. I guess Caroline would have represented the "real" NY, you know, the Upper East Side, better than some chick from upstate who doesn't genuflect adequately to Wall Street and the Grey Lady.
Maureen Dowd is a rancid cunt. Isn't her 15 minutes up with W's passing?

Atticus Grinch 01-26-2009 01:51 AM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 378918)
It's tough.

The Dems aren't yet off the reservation and the Republicans seem to be embracing their irrelevance. I think we may have to go international to find public figures to mock and ridicule, though even that may be hard because Letterman's already exhausted the bin Laden jokes and there's not going to be a lot of dispute here if we spend all our time mocking Robert Mugabe.

Can Schwarzeneggar do something to save us?
The first three months will be all about Biden. And Colbert, milking the defeated O'Reilley schtick.

I think presidential honeymoons are a stupid idea invented by the press itself to explain its own lazy coverage of policy. Policy changes upon inauguration, but it's complicated and therefore a snooze on TV. So TV news invents this idea that the media back off on the presidency while he gets his sea legs. Bullshit. Print media writes about policy on Day One while TV tries to work out how the new players fit into their narrative that politics runs on vendettas and grudges. They're drawing mind maps of who is supposed to hate whom.

Hank Chinaski 01-26-2009 08:13 AM
holy shit
 
http://www.bestweekever.tv/category/wtf/

this goes on in Greenwich village?

Tyrone Slothrop 01-26-2009 09:57 AM
Re: We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about!
 
Pictures of the inauguration and people watching it around the world at the Boston Globe's photo blog. You can see me in #17, on the right.

Tyrone Slothrop 01-26-2009 09:58 AM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 378937)
go back and read again.
Just so we're clear: You actually used the word "lawyers," and when I read it again the word is still there.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 378938)
straight question. how can you be so sure of the norm in seemingly every aspect of federal Government?
Straight answer. I am sure it's not the norm in most aspects of the federal government. But it's a big government, and that leaves a lot of turf to screw up.

Adder 01-26-2009 10:02 AM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Secret_Agent_Man (Post 378940)
I know no one wants to talk about his anymore, but I think Don Rumsfeld is in the top 3 list of major Bush mistakes.
He may be among the top 3 major mistakes for any American president.

Hank Chinaski 01-26-2009 10:16 AM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 378945)
Straight answer. I am sure it's not the norm in most aspects of the federal government. But it's a big government, and that leaves a lot of turf to screw up.
It was an honest question.

We know about people's backgrounds a bit here and it impacts credibility. Like when Wonk says something about tax, people don't question it.

Burger might question policy, but even he wouldn't challenge substance.

both you and GGG post statements that are certain about how bush did things that varied from standard government. I know that space fuck is basing shit on what he read that morning. I know you read lots, and if your knowledge is based entirely on the readings, that's cool. I was just asking if there was more that supports your strong opinions.

Tyrone Slothrop 01-26-2009 10:33 AM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 378948)
It was an honest question.

We know about people's backgrounds a bit here and it impacts credibility. Like when Wonk says something about tax, people don't question it.

Burger might question policy, but even he wouldn't challenge substance.

both you and GGG post statements that are certain about how bush did things that varied from standard government. I know that space fuck is basing shit on what he read that morning. I know you read lots, and if your knowledge is based entirely on the readings, that's cool. I was just asking if there was more that supports your strong opinions.

I posted about a Washington Post article about record-keeping -- or the lack thereof -- at Guantanamo. I claim no special knowledge of the conditions there, and was surprised by the story when I read it. Now that different people are running the federal government, I suspect that we'll see a bunch of stories about things that were going on that were not being disclosed. But maybe not.

Fugee 01-26-2009 10:34 AM
Re: We will never agree on this and therefore it is pointless to talk about!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 378890)
quotes from 9/11 are silly. everyone was too geeked about killing everyone. they ended up attacking Afghanistan. Iraq happened later. When Iraq started, bush had everything, he controlled both houses. Do you really think he and his people were so dumb they created a war to "avenge" daddy? question 2: if you really think that, who is dumb?
I'm with Lester as to W's motivation. I always thought it was about his dad. As for his people, I suspect it was less to do with daddy than oil. Terrorism was probably somewhere on the list, but not at the top.

Hank Chinaski 01-26-2009 10:37 AM
Re: Locking people up with no files.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 378949)
I posted about a Washington Post article about record-keeping -- or the lack thereof -- at Guantanamo. I claim no special knowledge of the conditions there, and was surprised by the story when I read it. Now that different people are running the federal government, I suspect that we'll see a bunch of stories about things that were going on that were not being disclosed. But maybe not.
I'm not even referring to any one post. But whatever.


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