Catch 22
 

I cannot remember your stance on the allegations of torture stuff re: waterboarding, CIA holding facilities in Eastern Europe, etc. What was it?




ETchange "holing" to "holding." Haven't seen that particular allegation yet.

Catch 22
 

I went out for lunch. Someone bought beer. What can I say?

Catch 22
 

See, I could look at a bumper sticker like that, and not even key the car!

Catch 22
 

The way to restore dignity and honor to the White House, in your view, must be to lie about another country in order to justify invasion.

As for the "shape shifters of the world," I wasn't one of those idiots out there protesting the war before it even started. I supported it. I only started talking about how WBush lied after it became apparent that Bush lied. And that's creating an awful lot of shape shifters in the world.

Happy Thanksgiving
 

I get it. The one thing they can agree upon is that they hate us. Sounds like our plan is working!

Catch 22
 

The record is well established that W regularly shuts out or ignores anyone or anything that is likely to be a source of contradiction. It isn't that he didn't trust the source of the new data; the same sources produced the old data. He simply didn't want to hear anything that conflicted with what he had already decided to do.

I'm not saying he lied, in the sense that he willfully and subjectively stated something he knew for certain to be a falsehood. But he was dishonest in the sense that he willfully shunned any person or report that objectively did or should have given him pause.

Catch 22
 

1. Waterboarding, like snowboarding, is easier than skiing after the first couple of lessons.

2. I don't think it's proper to speak of the sex lives of CIA people. It makes me think of Wilson in bed, and I have a nice dinner coming up and don't want to go there.

Catch 22
 

OK: since perceptions do matter.

But from a cost/benefit analysis I think it would have been beneficial to go in anyway. And whether Bush lied has nothing to do with whether it was a right decision to go in. The anti-war people keep referring to the lie, like somehow the lie effects the cost benefit analysis.

The lie may be relevent to Bush's character but it is not relevent when dicussing whether or not the war was the right action to take. Either the war was the right move or wrong move but whether or not he lied in no way figures into that analysis

Catch 22
 

No, really. When you write "The value of the goal notwithstanding, honor means something," I know you're talking about Bush's veracity in his public statements.

To me, the concept of honor also includes stuff like the treatment of prisoners. I can't remember if you're one of the "shit happens in war" guys or not, and if so, whether the prospect of our keeping interrogation facilities in Eastern Europe so that our CIA, military staff, and civilian contractors can do in our name the handy stuff that they can't in, say, Topeka, at least inspires a mild sense of irony.

Catch 22
 

Shut up.

Shut up.

I'm not saying it wasn't RED, in the sense that it reflected a wavelength pattern and frequency normally associated in the modern world with the concept of the color "red" . . .

Catch 22
 

I've yet to see any of this progress beyond "anonymous sources say . . ." Abu Graihb? Sicko individuals, not national policy. Do some people end up getting tortured in any war? Sure. We send marginally sane people with weapons and training into situations in which we cannot supervise them. It's gonna happen. We should fight to stop it whenever we can. But the distance between what's been shown, and what you think Bush is responsible for, is vast.

In WWI, it's estimated that we summarily executed tens of thousands of German prisoners of war. I remember, as a kid, sitting by a fire and listening to the old coot who lived down by the dump talk about how his unit was so pissed after losing half its men that they took several hundred prisoners and fried them in a barn in France. I know that shit goes on all the time. I remember getting high with my friends as they came back from Nam, listening to them talk about hosing entire villages.

It sucks. We need to stop it when we can. But, as you say, that IS war.

(ETA: Gone.)

Catch 22
 

2. He was given enough information with which a reasonable person would conclude that no weapons existed. There was probably more evidence that North Korea had weapons than Iraq.

He certainly did not have any reliable information that 9/11 and Saddam were linked.

Bilmore, I don't think he lied. I think he made a horrible decision based on flimsy data. He was grossly negligent. This isn't a case in which the prosecution used the information that bests supported its argument at trial. This is a case in which the prosecution completely skipped the grand jury (b/c there wasn't enough evidence to show probable cause) and prevented the defense from offering any argument whatsoever. Why does Bush hate due process? Who started this stupid trial analogy?

Catch 22
 

OK. McCain and the guy from SC and the guy from VA want to pass legislation that spells out what can and can't be done to prisoners/detainees, and stuff. The W Administration is pushing hard for an exclusion from this legislation for any actions taken by the CIA in covert stuff, or something (look it up, I don't feel like it). Does this not say to you that the Administration, from a policy standpoint, is saying that they want CIA personnel to be able to do whatever they want? Or not to be constrained by anything formal, which to me, is the same thing as "do whatever they want."

ETA to add summary of exemption White House (via Cheney) requested be added to McCain's blanket legislative provision barring "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of detainees in U.S. custody, which has been passed by the Senate three (3) times.

White House exemption summary:

• The White House initially tried to kill the anti-torture provision while it was pending in the Senate, then switched course to lobby for an exemption in cases of "clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States." The president would have to approve the exemption, and Defense Department personnel could not be involved. In addition, any activity would have to be consistent with the Constitution, federal law and U.S. treaty obligations, according to draft changes in the exemption the White House is seeking.

"Disneyland" for this turkey = "going to the farm" for your childhood pet.
 

Hmm. Seems like y'all are discussing shit too.

Ya see, what actually happened was "Bush fried." First his brain in the Go-Go '70s, then the Texas Rangers, and now he is going to deep-fry a turkey. Oh, he also plied, denied, cried (wolf), Shanghaied, and relied, but mostly I think he Shaniaed.

Padilla
 

US citizen, arrested in US and held for three years w/o charges, finally indicted today (coincidentally, right before the SC considers his challenge to his being held seemingly indefinitely, contra to the US constitution). Charges -- engaged in "a plot to 'murder, kidnap and maim' people . . . " where? where are the people he was plotting to do bad things to? ". . . overseas."

• Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who announced the indictment here, said that Mr. Padilla had conspired as part of a "North American support cell" to send "money, physical assets and new recruits" overseas to engage in acts of terrorism and that he had traveled abroad himself to become "a violent jihadist."
  
  . . .
  
  The indictment, which was returned by a federal grand jury in Miami, said that Mr. Padilla had plotted with four co-defendants in South Florida and elsewhere from October 1993 to the fall of 2001 to promote terrorist activities overseas.
  
  Often speaking over the telephone in code, the indictment said, the defendants talked of getting money "to the soccer team in Chechnya or Bosnia," of "trade in Somalia," of going on a picnic in Egypt "God willing" and getting "green goods" to Lebanon, where they were "needed urgently," and of assisting "tourism" in Kosovo. The indictment says they traveled overseas to foster terrorism and sometimes funneled money to terrorists under the guise of charitable donations.
  
  . . .
  
  Although today Mr. Gonzales described Mr. Padilla as a violent jihadist, there was no mention of the earlier "dirty bomb" accusation, which was never the subject of formal charges. Nor was there a mention in the indictment of any violence that Mr. Padilla had hoped to wreak in the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/po...rtner=homepage

I really hope that additional charges having to do with stuff directed at the US (even US citizens overseas, or whatever) are added.