See what I mean Mince? It looks like the carry-all charge is going to be:
Did you ever notice that that excuse only gets trotted out by the Right Wing when an alleged conservative party is in power in all 3 branches?
More to the point, can you imagine what the Right Wing reaction would be if 9/11 had happened on Clinton’s watch and he were asking for the kind of powers that Bush is asking for? The moderate/liberal reaction to the current situation would look Zen-like in comparison.
Or even more to the point, can you imagine the Right Wing reaction if 9/11 had happened on Clinton’s watch and he responded to it with the same impotency he displayed in regard to the hundreds of other American lives that were lost due to terrorist attacks on his watch?
He would likely have cautioned against over-reaction (again!) and found dozens of ideas why any real action would be a bad idea.
Oh, he’d have thrown around lots of tough-sounding words, which our enemies would have laughed at (again!); issued more lame excuses about other countries being soverign and all that; perhaps tried to find some way to entice, bribe or impose sanctions on whatever governments his emaciated intelligence services told him were financing and/or protecting the terrorists responsible, and in general taken the position that it was essentially a police problem – notwithstanding, of course, the fact that there were no police anywhere capable of dealing with the problem in the first place!
Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton Blame Clinton
You know, that gets really old. You’d think that after six years of desperately striving to make your guy look good, you’d be able to pull out an actual argument that doesn’t have a referral to what Clinton did wrong.
Right wing garbage. He accomplished more against terrorism than Bush, for certain. Hard not to, after all.
Lie. Clinton warned the Bushites about Osama, and they ignored it; it’s Bush who has done nothing useful against terrorism. He’s done quite well at promoting and justifying it, however.
From Snopes :
This nonsense about how Clinton was weak on terror is pure right wing lies. Note that Clinton caught and convicted the head of the terrorists that attacked the WTC on his watch, unlike Bush. Clinton used police methods because they work; Bush uses military methods because he’s a murderous screw up, who never does anything but fail and destroy.
Well, jayjay, you’re the one who brought up the hypothetical of an eager, forceful, doing-something Clinton and posited the question of the right’s response in an effort to make those on the right appear hypocritical. I merely suggested that no such behavior by Clinton would have been likely in the first place, thus rendering your hypothetical (and the right’s likely response) moot.
Further, I would suggest that if you replaced ‘Clinton’ with ‘Bush’ in this silly post of yours, you’d actually have the de facto motto for this board for the last six years.
One rarely needs to make those on the Right “appear” hypocritical. One only needs to wait for them to be hypocritical.
Except in that case my post would actually be accurate.
Thank you for illustrating my point about the impotent way Clinton went about doing things. I would have preferred a president who dealt with the problem himself rather than passing it off to the next guy!
All of you Righties who harp on this are acting like Clinton had a free hand and a cooperative Congress to do with whatever he liked. Not the case. “Wag the dog” mean anything to you? Maybe because it’s the accusation that Congressional Republicans made when Clinton DID bomb camps where Bin Laden was thought to be in residence?
Were you even conscious during the Clinton administration, especially the late Clinton administration? Clinton couldn’t blow his nose without criticism and obstructionism from Congress. The Right has the audacity to criticise Clinton for being preoccupied with the Lewinsky scandal. But who, exactly, was making the Lewinsky scandal practically the whole business of the government in the first place? Who were the ones working up to an impeachment of the president during those days (which are now apparently considered by those same people critical to doing something about bin Laden)?
Let me help out…it starts with an R, ends with an N, and has a bunch of assholes in the middle.
You know, I discovered long ago that there’s really no difference in the right and left in terms of behavior; we just come at things from different ends of the spectrum. The left is every bit as hypocritical as the right, and vice versa. The left is just as guilty as the right of just about any other type of human behavior you’d like to excoriate, too: bigotry; hatred; intolerance; the desire for violence against those who would thwart your will…you name it, it’s all there on the left, too.
So you can come down off your high-horse anytime now. You aren’t fooling anyone but yourself and a few like-minded cronies.
Well…excruciatingly commonplace, anyway. :rolleyes:
Coming from a supporter of the man who’s going to hand Iraq and other disasters over to his successors that’s outright ridiculous. Bush unlike Clinton ( or most other people ) doesn’t deal with problems; he fails and fails and fails and fails and fails.
Clinton dealt with any number of things, including the WTC bombers, as I pointed out. Of course some things were left unfinished; did you think the world would pause for the handover of power, all problems erased ? The difference is, Clinton left some problems unfinished; Bush will leave all of them, and I doubt he’ll try to give any advice to his successor.
We are speaking of the Republicans and the Democrats, not some abstract right and left. And the Republicans are far worse than the Dems; more corrupt, more incompetent, more vicious, more malignant, more brutal; crazier and greedier and stupider. What’s really depressing is that they manage this despite the Democrats being rather disgusting themselves.
Perhaps they disapproved of his warning the camps beforehand. Most pubbies likely think that if you’re going to try to bomb someone, that they not…you know…be told about it beforehand.
Were you even conscious during the Clinton administration, especially the late Clinton administration? Clinton couldn’t blow his nose without criticism and obstructionism from Congress.
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Clinton had eight years…count 'em, eight! He chose to deal with the problem in the least provocative way he could get away with because to do otherwise would be, like, damaging in the polls and stuff.
Well, given that I’m not one of those people you’re talking about, I couldn’t say. I don’t criticise Clinton for being preoccupied by the Lewinsky scandal. He’s a multi-tasker; I’m sure he could contend with both at once.
But you know, once upon a time we had a president named Ronald Reagan who wouldn’t even enter the Oval Office without his suit coat on, such was his respect for the position he held and the office that went with it. Billy-boy chose to get blow-jobs from interns in the Oval Office and fuck 'em with cigars, and then when he got busted following lie after lie to the contrary, he had to deal with the consequences. Tough. But like I said, he’s a multi-tasker and I’m sure that had he wanted to deal effectively with bin Laden, he could have.
And you are how old?
Given that I lack the energy right now to argue with this kind of nonsense, I think I’m just gonna bail and hit the sack.
'Night, all.
Aww, darn it, he was just getting to the good part, where St. Ronnie of Bakersfield slays the Evil Red Dragon of Evil, and then begins to build the Magic Shield of Defense, which, to this very day, is just about ready to test, and then we’ll be safe and happy forever and ever, in our Shining Citadel on the Hill.
Dammit! I was just about to doze off when I get a call from the Department of Redundancy Department asking about this dragon you’re talking about. I told them you didn’t hear about it from me. I imagine you’ll be getting a call.
Now, back to bed!
Wonder what my reaction would be if, SA having abandoned trying to make this case a week ago in a thread where the subject was the comparative responses of Bush and Clinton to terror, decided to bring this subject up again in a quite different thread?
I’d be pretty damned pissed, is the answer.
If you want to discuss habeas corpus and the potential for indefinite detention under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that Congress just passed, hang around.
If you want to discuss Bush’s and Clinton’s responses to 9/11 and other attacks by ObL and other terrorists, I would ask you to kindly find another thread for that; you could even resurrect the one from a week ago. This thread’s stayed remarkably well-focused for over seven pages; we’ve even stayed away from the manifold other issues raised by the new Act, and let the GD thread cover that ground.
Habeas is a particular type of “appeal” rights; it is a challenge to being wrongfully imprisoned. Here is a basic definition.
As I said earlier, this statute does appear to allow appeals, but only appeals of a final judgment of a military commission. I’m not overly concerned with those who actually get a trial, but rather those who will be indefinitely detained without a trial. By not allowing habeas, this act allows the administration to keep people without trial forever, leaving them with no way to challenge their detention (or for that matter, to challenge any violations of the law including being tortured) in the judicial branch. And, as uglybeech pointed out, Hamdan (and Rasul) are completely irrelevant.
This isn’t an easy issue, in part because of the sheer number of detainees and history. There are currently thousands of people, many of them bad, evil men, who are being detained by the US military, either in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Guantanamo. And, as Bricker has pointed out, it has always been acceptable to detain people seized on the battlefield indefinitely. This is done as mainly a protection device, not allowing enemy soldier to return to the battlefield until the hostilities are over. The Geneva Convention, in part, created guidelines for how these people could be treated and what rights they were given. But one of the issues I have is when detentions are questionable to begin with, and have stopped being prophylactic, and the prisoners have no means to challenge their detention.
But now, we’re in a “war” that has no end; without POW’s, and against an enemy that has no recognized borders, no central command to end hostilities, and no easily recognizable uniforms or command structure. The issue is what to do with these detainees. I’m not completely sure myself. But I am concerned that, by cutting off habeas relief for everybody, this Act will allow this administration to lock innocent people up forever, with no due process rights, and no way to challenge their detention or even to hold people who torture, abuse, or kill them accountable. It’s not an easy issue.
No it isn’t, but I don’t think it is as hard as it is being made.
I think one key way to hold terrorism to as low a level as possible is to demonstrate to the world that we are a nation that believes in and actually delivers justice. That is, we regard everyone as at least human and proceed against them only though methods that allow them an opportunity to adequately defend themselves against our charges.
Our leaders are now publicly arguing for the right to hold prisoners indefinitely. They are also arguing for the right to subject them to degrading treatment or even physical torture I think the idea that we aren’t “the great Satan” who should be exterminated by any means possible suffers at least a serious setback.
Legal niceties aside, as it stands now our leaders seem to be doing their best to prove to the world that those terrorists who say that we are evil are right.
I think a key point to reiterate is that the battle for hearts and minds isn’t a battle for the hearts and minds of committed terrorists - we can assume we’ve already lost that one.
But it’s a battle for hearts and minds in the rest of the Muslim world, for two reasons:
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It’s a lot easier for terrorists to be invisible to us if they swim in a sea consisting of a populace that’s somewhere on the scale between apathetic and sympathetic. Muslims are going to tip our allies and agents off about bona fide terrorists only if they feel the terrorists are the bad guys, and we’re not. If we’re also the bad guys, why should they bother tipping us off to the next terrorist attack?
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The more repugnant our behavior, the more Muslims will join up with the terrorists.
Which can really be combined into this:
The more repugnant our behavior, the more likely that Muslims will gradually move rightward along the scale that runs from being pro-U.S. to not viewing either us or the terrorists as morally superior, to disliking us and thinking maybe the terrorists have a point, to being pro-terrorist (without actually being one) to joining up with the terrorists.