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By Mike McCarthy May 21, 2009, 2:52 GMT
NEW Obama in a bind over Guantanamo closure (Feature)
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Older Talkback
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...first he campaigned for this, and then he proceeds to roll on every Bush anti-terror point. Now, the left is furious with him for the way he's deserted them on this and so he's hamstrung to close Gitmo, yet the supposedly 'close cooperation' smoke and mirrors of the international community has left him high and dry on exporting Gitmo's prisoners. Now he wants to shove them into US prisons, as if this is supposed to be MORE humane. I guess he's never heard about US prisons. I'd suggest asking ANY detainee what he'd prefer and let it set there.
It appears you are again misinformed dear SP4 as we already agreed to take some prisoners from Guantanamo here .
Let us not forget a great deal of these prisoners are not even guilty of anything ,unless of course you have any serious evidence nobody else seems to have .It appears the likes of you are too chicken to even hold the guilty ones on american soil;I always thought that deep inside, those that brag the most are the real cowards when times call for so called 'patriotic duty' .So of course you now have to develop some strange logic to hide that fact .Have you no better explanation to offer as why you think it is impossible to lock up these prisoners i your own country ?Something that makes sense at all perhaps ?
Let me guess...if tomorrow the GOP decides that these prisoners MUST be transferred to your homeland prisons out of some deep underlying 'patriotic' reason...you'll be the first to agree and you 'll attack all those that disagree with the GOP,for whatever reason you'll be able to construct without using any common sense at all.
Nice post, Tonny. My views on detention without trial are on record so I'll skip that.
Only, what is 'so called' patriotic duty. I consider myself a Patriot. I love my country, consider I owe duty to her and am unashamedly proud of Britain. As, despite his other failings, is SP4 in the USA. Do you not have similar feelings for Belgium? You make a point of saying that's where you're from!
..if the GOP wanted them in US prisons, They'd BE there. The other 900 lb canary in the room is this: It would be immoral to house them in US Prisons. Disagree? Run the Red Cross down there and take a poll. I'll let it set with the results. Honestly, what could they be thinking...more humane???? Have they ever BEEN to a US prison???? The mexican gangs, or the white supremists will murder them, or force them into solitary! They'll be BEGGING for Gitmo in a day!
Trubrit, remember, some of these detainees are not criminals, they are POW's. They are not being held for trial, they are being detained as a point of war. These men certainly do not deserve the pleasure of detention in a place FAR more dangerous than the country club they now reside in.
Honestly, it is bewildering you miss the point here, but for Tonny, it does not surprise me that he fails to see Obama as the pig who now dresses as the farmer i.e. Gitmo east in Afghanistan, outsourced 'interrogations' and rendition to foreign nations, warrantless wiretaps, etc.
You see, Obama never actually faced a guy like Cheney in the ring, now a guy with absolutely nothing to lose, with FAR more political experience than the boy king, who got his tit in a wringer with all of this and now Cheney is torturing him, and Pelosi over it and it's all hers and Obama's fault. Truth commisssion???....hell Cheney is YELLING for release of ALL documents and Barak is gagging it!..and Cheney can keep this up until he dies. He can spank indefinitely, framing the issue and keeping it in the news forever. Five months and he's already in a giant bear trap.
Meanwhile, the libnazi left is desparately voting down bipartisan commissions into Pelosi's involvment in what must be about 40 briefings on said interrogations, as they desparately try to figure a way to trade up from this shrew as fast as they can.
Change you can believe in.....
Whoa, SP. These men are not POWs. The 'war' on terror is a political phrase for public consumption, not a legally declared conflict on another polity. Terrorists are generally treated as criminals, not enemy combatants. We went through this debate years ago with respect to provisional IRA prisoners. Nor have I ever advocated holding them in the mainstream US prison system, and for the reasons you correctly state. We held paramilitary IRA and Ulster 'Loyalist' terrorists separately in a specifically designated facility too; the Maze Prison. The difference is that those men had been charged, tried with due process of law and convicted.
Oh, I forgot to comment on the 'Animal Farm' allusion. Shall we just say that Obama, now he is confronted with the realities of power is finding this problem as difficult to address as Bush before him, and is having to adopt much the same pragmatically oriented approach.
Both of you chaps, Tonny and SP, have been posting here longer than myself. I do not need to visit the archives to deduce that when Bush was in power, Tonny would have been extremely critical of the measures he now supports Obama in continuing. The diametrically opposite stance can be inferred for SP. It's not only presidents who can be justifibly likened to 'Pilkington' and 'Napoleon,' is it? How did the book put it?
'The animals looked from pig to man, and back again from man to pig, but already it was impossible to tell which was which.'
...but I would point out the distinction that common criminals are rarely afforded the luxury of having their 'interrogations' vetted by the European Court of Human Rights. That being the case, we can hardly compare them to 'common' criminals, can we. Bush, dumb ol George, was apparantly firing on all cylinders and correctly used this as the firewall to greenlight his own 'interrogations' of these so called 'common' criminals. Legal precident...wow..what a bitch, eh?
Now, we are afforded box seat tickets to the homeboy Mikado, a sad saga of the boy king who is doing a moonwalk Michael Jackson would envy, from point to point, gagging CIA memos, pictures and boarding the door at the CIA, as Pelosi desparately knocks saying 'help meeee!'. He runs to father Gates, sticking his hand up the puppets dress, pulls the little cord and out comes 'new prison!, new prison!' Obama then proceeds to do the speech circuit in the blind, Audacity of Hope, that his own persona will somehow do Dick Cheney better than a 12 gauge shotgun can hit a Texas lawyer. Dick, a real pol, did the arithmatic in about a nanlsecond and realized he could keep this in the press for weeks. Pity he's not NEARLY a good enough marksman Trubrit, eh? Must be the Heinekins.
'..git em Dick!'...GW Bush.
God, you could not make up better stuff!
Now, the 'New Prison' will be made in a state with what must be no living federal representation. Last year...I would have said this was Conneticut, but the senior senator moved on....
Lor' SP. You can write when you want to! I'm not desperately bothered where you keep them so long as it's not in a mainstream prison. Just TRY them. Indefinite detention without trial creates a dangerous precedent.
...what is sooo dangerous about keeping them indefinitely? Oh yeah, we've heard all the 'international' arguments, but if you study the U.S. Justice system carefully, you will see a complex but orderly dealing with them, at least until the current leader appeared. I am dismayed by Europe's attitude when it took thirty years to pick up Carlos martinez' in a bar in Africa, and the four years it took a captured Slobodon Milsovic to be proseucted by that sham of an Internation Court masquerading as some kind of legal entity.
Like scientific news, the press is even less able to articulate, correctly, what is happening to these folks, legally. Each has a legal landscape to navigate, and a lawyer doing it, but you'd never know it reading the daily tripe. Even the Bosheviks at The Economist have acknowledged this, a feat I am utterly amazed at. If someone wants to blame Bush for something, it was not seizing the moment for a Constitutional Amendment to define this all and deal with it after 9/11. Even then, the pig now dresses like the farmer i.e. Obama who is copying success by adopting virtually all of Bush's moves i.e. Gitmo east in Afghanistan, outsourcing of interrogations and renditions to foreign sources, warrantless tapss on foreign calls, all the stuff Obama ran against to begin with.
Stop the presses Trubrit...Obama is a liar.
What gitmo is now is a political football, it's closing a promise by a simple Libnazi politician with transient political gains in mind and not justice at all. He is loathe to point out that Gitmo has survived every legal challenge, including his last impotent move, a fact which must frustrate him more than Kim of N. Korea, at least until this last week, and now he is mired in a mess.
It's not a mess to those who laud the enforcement of law and justice over political gain. That, of course, matters even less to Obama than the economy, it that is possible.
If you claim Obama is doing the exact same thing as Bush,why do you oppose him ?Of course you don't believe your own rants ,do you ?Unless you are confused of course ...
..in fact, I was wondering when all the pseudointellectuals were going to ask that. My reply is this:
Since Obama is doing all of these things, why do we not see his base reacting negatively to these same things? Why is there no resistance anymore to the war in Afghanistan? Where are the personal privacy rants, the torture opponents, etc.
Why not? I suspect they know what we know...Obama lies about his beliefs and his campaign promises, and that these folks never really objected to these things except to sway public opinion. This is a president with a map of his voter base and, like the auto bailiout helps only those who can affect his next election.
In this case, I'd have to say the pig is not dressing like the (last) farmer...that farmer actually had a set of beliefs.
Indeed, the contortions of the 'liberal' conscience can be truly amazing!
I disagreed with many policies pursued by the Bush administration. Though partly, I must admit, because of inept implementation and because some of them appeared pragmatically to be inimical to basic legal tenets protective of individual liberties. Others opposed them on 'moral' or 'ethical' grounds exclusively: And did so very, very loudly.
There are now definite signs that many of these policies are still being pursued, far more covertly, now in direct contradiction of the accompanying empty rhetoric and with a perhaps equal measure of ineptitude: And all the fevered little conscience stricken 'progressives' who formerly opposed them so vociferously are as silent as a Tomb (if somewhat less useful and decorative). Even worse, many now seek to excuse actions that formerly they denigrated with an unabated stridency amounting almost to unhinged hysteria!
Were I a politician it would be my role to support uncritically measures that my government determine to be expedient and contrive reasons to validate them: For sake of party, or even occasionally of country were I privy to facts that led me to a Machiavellian conclusion that the 'ends justified the means.' I am not a politician nor, I deduce from the absence of any really sour stink rising from my pc, are most if not all of the other posters here. We are members of the publics of our various countries. Our role, in democratic societies is to maintain a watching and skeptical brief on those we elect to govern us.
Of course, many who bother to post on news sites will have an ongoing interest in public affairs and will own political views and affiliations: But unthinking partisanship is indicative of a crass and facile moral and ethical fluidity. Even worse, it reveals a lack of any real intellectual depth, a deficiency of character and a basic inherent duplicity of thought.
I hate bigots, but I detest hypocrites more!
...but what leads you to believe the particualar partisanship is unthinking?
If you read my previous post some indicators are given. I would conclude partisanship to be at least revealing of the poster's own agenda if it remains unwavering in the face of obvious 'volte faces' by either side; indulges in anile criticism of the other side for minor slips or omissions, blowing them up out of all proportion; adopts a diametrically oposite position with respect to the same or similar occurrences when committed by the home team, excusing them as minor or contriving sepcious arguments to present them in the best possible light; avoids addressing opponents cogent points by obfuscation, presenting irrelevent or tangential material, ignoring them, or simply resorting to insult:
AND
When all of this is displayed consistently, over time and irrespective of the issue under discussion.
'agenda-revealing' in my subjective opinion only graduates though 'uncritical' to fetch up at 'unthinking' when the poster reveals by lack of style, quality, complexity and verisimilitude that the issue may not even be properly understood in the first place.
A good example would be my hounding of Tonny on the 'Gates new prison' article. He's bright, so understands the issue but was batting for Barack. When I tried to tie him up with a hypothetical question he managed, over two pages or so, to employ most of the techniques mentioned above: Revealing that, as a big government socialist of the somewhat civilised, effete, academic 'Continental' variety he will always support as uncritically as he can whatever he perceives as the best vehicle for advancing his own agenda.
In Obama's case Tonny has reached the 'uncritical' half-way-house stage; but that's also a matter of herd instinct re the observance of pc shibboleths. UK and Euro liberals have been clucking like a hen with a cute, downy new chick over Barack ever since his election. We both know why!
Oh, and SP, referring to him as 'The magic Negro' is mistaken tactics. It draws the formulaic pc response of outraged horror and denigration but all you're doing is giving them a chance to display their immaculate progressive credentials. They get a nice, sanctimonious, warm fuzzy blanket feeling of impeccable moral and intellectual superiority. Like all the good boys and girls in Sunday School going 'OOOH! Teacher! Teacher!' when little Jhonny stubs his toe and exclaims 'Sh*te!'
In fact, many of them are as thick as two short planks. They follow the accepted pc rules now because they are the 'in' ones to own. Had they been in 1930's Berlin they would all be poncing about with little gold Hakenkreuz badges pinned to their lapels and mouthing tosh about 'Der herrenvolk.'
Make no mistake, SP, these folk are just as prejudiced as you can be. If you really want to annoy them, accuse them of racism for fawning on Obama because of his ethnicity. You will be able to hear the howl of outraged propriety without electronic assistance. Tonny, and your tedious, cognitionally challenged alter ego who I now address as SPthree-and-a-half will be first in the queue.
...what other reason WAS Obama elected for than the fact that he was black?????
Look at him....remove his ethnicity and he's Edwards without the pissed off wife. Hillary, the REAL candidate, would likely be president.
Then I suppose you're lucky. ANYONE but Hillary! She strikes me as being the most openly ruthless, power hungry person I've ever encountered.
That's why I found your parody so funny when she says to Barack,
'you're hyperventilating... use a bag, there's one under the desk... Sure there is... Bill used to put it over their heads..'
It exactly reflects her character. Rational, competent, practical, but emotionless, absolutely soulless and burningly covetous of both office and lucre. Billy boy could have screwed half the women in America and she wouldn't have batted an eyelid so long as he remained a suitable vehicle to advance her own wealth and career.
I would not like to be in Barack's shoes if he slips up or The Fates just prove unkind to him.
..go take a gander at Bill Mahar's Obama comments on CNN last week and see what that will look like...I still cannot decide if Mahar had a brain transplant or his corporate handlers realized that when your peddle-hate cash cow retires, that you need a new libnazi hate cash cow ASAP...
Call it 'Balanced Media Coverage' SP.
...if it actually was. If that were the case, one has to ask why they started 6 months after the election? No Brit, I think I'll stick with door #1 and/or Door #2.
Six months too late, eh?
And turn your irony detector back on, SP. Anything can be balanced if you shift the fulcrum over far enough.
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