I guess no one has read Senator Joe Lieberman’s (D-CT) editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal…
That was so nice, I thought I’d share some additional quotes from the editorial…
Y’know… I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… I’d vote for this guy.
I fail to see why this statement from a defence counsel would be considered as controversial. Why do you expect him to say? “My client is guilty as hell and has no excuses”?
Oh, Jeebus. “Fightin’ Joe” Lieberman. One can certainly see why you are so enamored, Dish. Joe has been to Iraq! Wow! Actually been there, and found all this good stuff! All that really great “freedom is on the march” stuff that tends to be obscured by all the bombs and corpses and other such niggling details.
Whaddaya think? Did he bravely surge beyond the “Green Zone” where so many wimpy liberal-media whores cringe? From whence this astonishing compendium of information? He flings numbers about with such casual abandon! There are “10,000” insurgents? Really? And he knows this…how? Did he count them? Take an impromptu census?
And all these battle ready Iraqi troops! Why, it seems only yesterday I was hearing about a mere brigade ready to hold their own. Oh, wait, it was yesterday. Well, then, they must be lying! Because “Fightin’ Joe” has ferreted out the truth from…where again did he say he found these facts?
The plan is flexible! That’s great! Previously, I didn’t know a plan existed. Now, I know that it is flexible! Which is undoubtedly a good thing, when your plan has little or no direct impact on reality, its good that it can at least respond to reality!
Which means more, not less. Yes? As they stand up, we stand down, but they only stand up when we prop them up? Whoop-de-fucka-do!
I’m gonna take a wild stab here, and guess that the part of Baghdad they are patrolling so sucessfully is that part of Baghdad occupied primarily by Shia? That part of Baghdad that has the least insurgency to begin with? Barney Fife can probably contain the crime problem in Mayberry, so long as he has his bullet.
Again. And the sorry-ass methods by which it was achieved, the less said, the better.
Why, thats much better than we had been told! Thank heaven “Fightin’ Joe” got the real facts from…where did he say he got his facts, again? That part seems a bit…fuzzy.
And he had Thanksgiving lunch with a Marine colonel. Who, to his happy surprise, told him exactly what he most wanted to hear. Which anecdote he eagerly relays to us as meaning…what, exactly? That now Joe has the inside scoop?
The Dems should wrap him up in gift paper, stick a bow on him, and leave him at the doorstep of the Republican National Committee.
Time magazine Baghdad bureau chief Michael Ware on Morning Sedition this morning:
I don’t know about Stalinist, but I agree Clark is anti-American. It’s one thing to take a case where you’re defending somebody who is overwhelmingly regarded as guilty; but for the last thirty years, Clark’s been taken cases on the principle that the United States government is on the other side.
There are plenty of good defenses against mass murder: my client’s orders were misinterpreted; my client never issued any orders; hell, even a nutball might want to argue that those killed actually had some due process.
I don’t think Clark’s represenation (if he was summarized accurately) that any leader would do the same thing under the circumstances pretty much acknowledges that Saddam ordered an extermination of a city. And here’s the kicker: Clark seems to think that any leader would do the same.
If this truly reflects his argument, someday I’ve love to hear Clark’s explaination of why Iraqi, Rwandan, and Serbian dictators are allowed to murder civilians because “that’s what any leader would do”, but why NATO’s intervention in Kosovo to protect those same kind of civilians is a war crime of some sort.
Um, which of us posted an assertion of faith, and which of us actually looked for cites? :rolleyes: Gawdamighty.
I think it makes sense if he can’t plausibly deny that Saddam issued such orders. For instance, just look at the USA. People are detained without due process of law, charges, etc… What do people who defend this policy, even on this board, say? That the USA is engaged in a “war on terror” and that in these extreme circumstances, detaining people without due process of law is necessary. Actually this argument is even used to support the use of torture.
Basically Saddam’s counsel is saying the same thing : yes, these people were executed, but we were in the middle of a full-blown war, the country was threatened by Iranian conspiracies, etc… And killing them without trial, in these extreme circumstances was necessary to insure the survival of the country.
As for the “every other leader would have done the same”, actually I wouldn’t be surprised if many other leaders, even democratically elected ones, would indeed order to execute people if they deemed it to be a vital necessity when the country is engaged in a war. Heck! Look at Israel and its extra-judiciary executions of palestinian leaders. That’s exactly what they’re doing, albeit on a smaller scale.
Maybe it won’t fly in a court, but what else could be said if the crime itself can’t be denied? What argument could Bush or Sharon’s counsels use if they were somehow tried? It makes perfect sense to me.
I’m confused. Whose violations of human rights is this line of argument defending: Saddam’s murder of 140 men and boys and the torture of 1,500 others; Israel’s assasinations of dozens of terrorist leaders; or the US’s secret imprisonment of hundreds of alleged enemy combatants? Personally, I’m against all of the above, and think that a “legal” argument that would excuse all of these examples is outright odious.
Surely a team of lawyers can come up with a better defense than: “Hey! Everyone murders a little bit! We’re just keeping up with the Idi Amins of the world!” For crying out loud, even OJ Simpson’s defense team managed to come up with something a little better than “Who hasn’t gotten mad at their spouse from time to time?”
Well, good, then. That means I don’t have to tell one what one certainly sees. Whew!
I also hope you can just as certainly see that I don’t mean to defend Lieberman’s statements line-by-line… they’re his, not mine. I don’t know what happened in the REPLY process, but this post was actually in response to Wake up call’s cite of al Jazeera’s take on some recent internal Iraqi polling. Somehow in my delirium, the quote header got wiped.
Anyway, I just found it interesting that a US Senator returning from Iraq had glaringly different views of what’s actually going on there than do many of us here stateside. Go figure. I’m certain there are plenty of explanations for this divergence of opinion, and I’m sure one of them is that the Senator is an unwitting tool of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Personally, I subscribe to one a bit less whacky… like maybe he just might know what he’s talking about. But, that’s just me.
God, I hate dial-up!
Gotta get some work done today.
Isn’t “scale” part of the issue here? It’s one thing to direct a retaliatory strike against specific terrorist leaders, and another entirely to conduct a blanket round up of all living persons in the area and execute them all. At least there used to be a difference before George Bush took office, which of course, changed everything.
That seems unlikely to me. The obligations Lemur is talking about have their roots in two things:
So the obligations rest on one piece of law that almost certainly applies in Iraq, and broad ethical principles which are not written at any rate. Thus the situation Lemur discusses would almost certainly prevail at Saddam’s trial - these are the obligations Clark would be under.
Where do you get “something stinks” from all that? If your theory is correct, then Clark is making the most moral and honorable political choices a person in his position could make. If anything stinks, it would be the potential conflict-of-interest between his political agenda and his fiduciary duty to give Hussein the best defense possible – but I don’t see how the two would actually conflict.
Just had a thought – do any of the Clark supporters here believe that he would sign up to defend Dick Cheney if he were to be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court for his involvement in various torture policies?
Why wouldn’t he? If Saddam and Milosevic are entitled to competent defense team (note that Clark was not the lead attorney in either case) , shouldn’t Clark feel the same moral obligation to bring his extensive experience in international tribunals involving human rights violations to bear in Cheney’s case?
Listen, I think it is clear that Clark will go after any administration, so long as that administration is American.
Here is his draft indictment of Bill Clinton and his cabinet for war crimes and crimes and crimes against humanity. I personally witnessed him state in a speech (Pittsburgh, 1991) that George H.W. Bush was a war criminal and that impeachment proceedings should proceed against him.
His efforts against the government in 1980 (Carter administration) have been mentioned earlier.
Now, one could certainly oppose successive administrations for the last several decades. However, this puts one quite close to being against American society and its system of government in general.
Clark is odd man out here, far to the left of both parties and alienated from the American system in general. He supports reflexively our country’s enemies, including those who have hurt and killed Americans. If he cannot be described as anti-American, then very few people can.
I really don’t know, BG. I admit I’m taking a flyer here, but I’m trying to find something other than the knee-jerk “anti-American” reason for Clark doing anything. He’s older now, has been kicked around a little more by the system, undoubtedly more cynical with less to lose. Did you see that photo they ran of him on the CNN website? Ferchrissakes, he looks like some homeless guy they dragged in off the street! Maybe he’s just getting an early start on a new, bearded look to fit in with the rest of Saddam’s Dream Team, but something just strikes me as “off”. He can’t possibly believe that Saddam has any chance of acquittal, so he must have some motive that fits his long-standing world view. As for whether that would be “moral” or “honorable”, I don’t think I’m ready to judge that yet. If he does indeed have something up his sleeve, then we shall see. If not, and he’s just there to put an American face on Saddam’s futile defense, then I’m afraid I would have a very hard time calling that moral or honorable.
Me either. Attorneys vigorously defend people they wouldn’t be caught dead with in public all the time. It’s the downside of the profession, you might say. And I’m not yet ready to assume that his personal political agenda, whatever that may be, doesn’t coincide precisely with Saddam’s – shaming the US out of Iraq and returning the country to the status quo ante.
:dubious: :mad: And what exactly makes you think that “knee-jerk anti-Americanism” isn’t the most moral and honorable choice a person in Clark’s position (or, for that matter, your position or mine) could make in this particular situation? Getting Bush impeached is a moral and honorable goal to say the very least. Undermining the perceived legitimacy of the U.S.-installed puppet government in Iraq is a much more challenging and morally ambiguous case – but you could make a much stronger case for that than for anything on the contrary side. See http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2286/.
You are ignoring some situations, I think.
Was it moral for Clark to call for Clinton’s inpeachment and trial for Clinton’s actions in Yugoslavia? Was it moral for him to attack the United States government in Iran while our hostages were being held there, and being threatened with death by the government hosting him?
I’d like your judgements here, please.
Never mind that your cites don’t exactly back up own argument, right?
To the rest of the posters, sorry for the hijack.
That’s why I said “in this particular situation.” I won’t defend every choice Clark has made in his post-AG career (what would have happened in Kosovo, without U.S. intervention?), but this time he seems to be on solid ground – even (in fact, especially) if his inserting himself into Iraqi justice/politics is actually intended to further political goals in the U.S., as Dishfunctional speculates.
