Middle Class Populist

Posts Tagged ‘Terrorism’

After hearing all the right wing whining that America is to weak to place the 9-11 terrorists on trial in New York City I have to wonder is it perhaps that they fear Dick Cheney might be called as a witness and if he were not to comply it could jeopardize the conviction of these terrorists? Dick Cheney seems to do a dance when he talks about national security issues. (See video below).

I have the habit of viewing things from a psychological perspective! I believe Cheney’s attacking of President Obama has the “function” or perhaps the “deliberate purpose” preventing his being called to Congressional hearings. If he were prosecuted then his followers could hold up their hands at the Democrats saying he was being persecuted for attacking Obama.

If the 9-11 terrorists are tried in an American civilian court they could present their prior treatment in Gitmo as a violation of the Geneva Convention and to show high level culpability of the US Government, who better to call as a witness than Dick Cheney! Read the rest of this entry »

This Social Democrat Liberal blogger is willing to follow the truth wherever it may lead. I ask my fellow progressives to divest themselves of knee jerk reactions. I urge this as an American first and as a Social Democrat second. I have watched several Liberal commentators lament that Nidal Hassan was sending e-mails to a known Islamic Radical Cleric yet Dr. Hassan was still retained in the military. Please read and follow both the point and counter points and my synthesis at the end.

Democrats can point out that Nidal Hassan had his e-mail monitored but no actions where taken against him. However we can thank the Republicans that we can indeed monitor e-mails! The fact that Democrats condemn the lack of acting on that monitoring is hypocritical! If we had our way there would have been no monitoring to begin with!

Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight I had the sickening experience of listening to Sean Hannity argue that water boarding is fine and that the President has the right to order it to protect America. His guest made a statement that Sean Hannity vigorously agreed with. The guest said. “There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents the President from doing this”. Oh gee I guess that is what you call a “non-activist” approach to the Constitution! Yet Hannity and his fellow travelers will preach to us about the value of a “Strict Constructionist interpretation” of the Constitution! Then they will preach “the lessons of history” as if we Democrats don’t know how freedom can be lost to the feels good solution to problems!

Well the video below shows the reason why you don’t torture! President Obama said it in his speech today! We want enemy troops to surrender to ours! They will do so if they can expect good treatment. Giving them good treatment SAVES AMERICAN TROOPS! Remember the video below how the Iraqi troops could not wait to surrender and were happy to do so! Would they be so enthusiastic after hearing Cheney?

The video above shows the good that can happen when we follow our American ideals and values! If enemy troops were to fear being water boarded or mistreated they would hold out longer thus more American lives would be lost! If they were higher ups they might even commit suicide and then we would never get the information we needed by traditional methods of interrogation! We must follow the Geneva Convention as President Obama has advocated.

Dick Cheney has criticized our President for trying to appeal to allies with his approach. Well listen to Dick Cheney in the video below when questioned in 1994 about the first Iraqi War. Note that he wanted to have allies join with us. He did not consider it wrong to appeal to allies.

The problem is that we all know that America will be attacked again and the Republicans want to set the Democrats up. Rudy Giuliani, if he were President would most likely do what he attempted as mayor and want to extend his term! Yes the lessons of history are something that Republicans preach but never learn. Our nation survived a Civil War and still had elections.

Now here is a scenario for Republicans to consider! If we allow water boarding to be defined as not constituting torture then what is to stop “enhanced interrogation techniques” from coming to a police station near you? If we allow the smirking George Bush to get away with his statement, “this is America and we don’t torture” and his definition to enter our legal code then a future President could do the same to his opponents! Am I being paranoid?

Well now what if we had a President who was “a pal of terrorists”! What if this same President wasn’t a “real American” and wanted to water board his opponents during some trumped up crises! Now you Republicans do believe President Barrack Hussein Obama is not a real American and a “pal of terrorists” don’t you? This just shows how opportunistic and shabby the Republicans are in their arguments! Republicans should be the first to make sure “water boarding” is defined as torture and illegal. But then again they lied about Obama being a pal of terrorists, because if he were Anti-American they should be the first to out law him having the authority to use it.

As I have mentioned in prior posts I would accept a limited, open and transparent “Allan Dorchowitz Court Torture Warrant” in the event of a terrorist nuclear bomb. But then again I would not desire to turn the operation of America’s ports over to the Dubai. You know the country that Halliburton has moved their corporate headquarters to. Yes Dubai that allowed covert shipments to Pakistan of materials needed by them to make nuclear weapons!

Dick Cheney is wrong that he and his fellow traveler George Bush protected us from a second attack! The first WTC attack happened in 1993! The second in 2001. It takes them a while to set up a new attack! The Republicans did not do anything spectacular. Yet the NEWS MEDIA never challenge them on this! This constitutes ANTI-LIBERAL NEWS MEDIA BIASES!

We live in a dangerous world but we must still balance security with the rule of law! The President swears to defend the Constitution of the United States not to follow the “feels good solution”! Time to learn the lessons of history else we will suffer in America our own “Reichstag Fire”!

Remember the days of Nixon when the Republicans whined about “Law and Order”! Oh the Republicans whine about a “strict constructionalist” interpretation of the the Constitution! Today on CBS’s show “Face The Nation”, former Vice President made the mistake in saying his oath was to defend the United States. While that is implied in the oath the actual literal requirement is to “preserve, protect and defend THE CONSTITUTION of the United States…”! (See Video Below).

As I mentioned in a prior post these are Republicans, you know the folks who think that having a nice semi-automatic weapon in your living room is as American as apple pie. It must be remembered that the reason they believe they need to have such powerful weapons is that these weapons are the last line of defense against our own government! Well maybe we should have weapons at home since Blackwater is being used to replace our armed forces in many instances!

The real issue is not if three terrorists were tortured but what is to protect us from future Presidents of the United States (Republican or Democrat) from isolating Americans from the courts and then torturing those they do not like. Well if I am an alarmist then why do right wingers need assault weapons in their homes? I grew up in the Vietnam era and I do fear the loss of civil liberties!

What I really find laughable about the Republicans is that they are the ones who lecture us Democrats about the evils of “ethical relativism” and the “feels good solution”! I would distinquish between the three who were tortured vs. the the majority of captured Al Qaeda prisoners. I would accept the Alan Dorchowitz solution for a public “Torture Warrant”! What can I say I am a liberal and do believe in ethical relativism and the “feels good solution” sometimes!

However when I hear former VP Dick Cheney saying that the Justice Dept. lawyers should not be prosecuted “simply because they gave bad advice” then perphaps we should subject Cheney to waterboarding! I am sick of the “newspeak” being practiced. OK I would under some situations, such as the threat of a dirty nuclear weapon, use TORTURE! But we need to have a LEGAL method that is such as proposed by Alan Dorchowitz! The real issue with torture is what has happened in Iraq! There our use of torture actually served to recruit young men into Al Qaeda!

Has anyone noticed that the Republicans continue to say that they protected the United States from further attacks? Excuse me but the first World Trade Center attack occured on February 26, 1993! The second did not occur till September 11, 2001. That is a long space between attacks without any military intervention! Yet no Democrat ever seems to challenge this Republican assertion that they protected our nation. Actually with the Republican SOCIAL ENGINEERING EXPERIMENT in Iraq we wasted valuable time and resources, not to mention lives, when we should have been hitting the Al Qaeda heartland in Afganistan and Pakistan!

We Democrats need to be more aggressive in our attacks on the Republcians!