Saturday, May 16, 2009

"Take Your Kids to Work" Gets Weird

This story has been around for a couple of weeks but I haven't mentioned it here. It broke out again yesterday when somebody added up the numbers.

From the Miami Herald:
TALLAHASSEE -- A total of 43 children were directly and indirectly shocked by electric stun guns during simultaneous ''Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day'' events gone wrong at three state prisons, according to new information provided Friday by the Florida Department of Corrections.

Also, a group of kids was exposed to tear gas during a demonstration at another lockup.

Three prison guards have been fired, two have resigned and 16 more employees -- from corrections officers to a warden -- will be disciplined due to the incidents that unfolded April 23, said DOC Secretary Walt McNeil. An investigation is ongoing.

None of the children in any of the incidents required medical attention or was notably harmed, McNeil said. He said the children, who ranged in age from 5 to 17, were all children of prison officials.

In nearly every case, the guards had permission from parents or grandparents to administer the ''electronic immobilization devices,'' McNeil said. 43 stun-gunned at prisons' Take Your Kids to Work Day

You need a license to drive a car, but anybody can have a child ...

34 Comments:

Anonymous Level Headed said...

anybody can get a license to drive. . .even the illegals.

May 16, 2009 10:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's been an interesting week as the cynicism of Democratic campaign hyperbole becomes clearer and clearer. Nancy Pelosi's prevarications about her knowledge of water-boarding became comical but her attacks on the CIA necessitate at least an apology, if not removal from her leadership role in Congress.

Sir B.O. also needs to apologize to his predecessor for his scurrilous accusations during the campaign:

"President Obama's endorsements of Bush-Cheney antiterror policies are by now routine: for example, opposing the release of prisoner abuse photographs and support for indefinite detention for some detainees, and that's just this week.

More remarkable is White House creativity in portraying these U-turns as epic change.

Witness yesterday's announcement endorsing military commissions.

White House officials insist that their tribunals will be kinder and gentler, stressing additional due-process safeguards for terrorists on trial for war crimes.

But the debate that has convulsed the political system since 9/11 isn't about procedural nuances.

It has been over core principles, with Democrats decrying a "shadow justice system" and claiming that "Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists."

The latter quote is from a speech by Senator Obama in 2007 denouncing "a legal framework that does not work."

He also referred to the civilian criminal justice system and courts martial that Democrats then claimed, and many still claim, are the right venues for antiterror prosecutions.

After the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision gave terrorists habeas rights, Mr. Obama again laid into the Bush Administration's "legal black hole" and "dangerously flawed legal approach," which "undermines the very values we are fighting to defend."

At least some people in the White House must now be embarrassed by their boss's switcheroo, though you can't tell from Friday's declaration.

In any event, Mr. Obama deserves credit for accepting that the civilian courts are largely unsuited for the realities of the war on terror.

He has now decided to preserve a tribunal process that will be identical in every material way to the one favored by Dick Cheney -- and which, contrary to the narrative that Democrats promulgated for years, will be the fairest and most open war-crimes trials in U.S. history."

So, when will our man-about-the-town, Barry O, be scheduling his prime time address explaining to the American people that he was wrong about how to deal with terrorists and apologizing to George Bush?

I was sitting on the beach this week reading an interview with Bob Dylan in the current edition of Rolling Stone. With a long history of recognizing the folly of the current mob opinion, he offers his own sagacity:

"As far as blaming everything on the last president, think of it this way: the same folks who had held him in such high regard, came to despise him. Isn't it funny that they're the very same people who once loved him? People are fickle. Their loyalty can turn at the drop of a hat."

Let's hope our current president realizes this.

May 17, 2009 6:02 AM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

Speaking of weirdness and stupidity, RNC Chairman Michael Steele has done it again.

He said small businesses will be hurt by gay marriage because "Now all of a sudden I've got someone who wasn't a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for,"

And what does he think happens when heterosexual marriage takes place?

Anon, the problem isn't what Pelosi, the minority leader at the time knew. The problem is what Bush and Cheney knew and what they ordered. Let's hear them answer some questions and make amends for their orders to torture people in order to concoct an Iraq-al Qaeda link to justify their invasion and occupation of Iraq, which has caused the death of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis along with thousands of our soldiers.

The only loyalty that's dropping these days besides GOP insiders support for Cheney is the ever-shrinking core of the GOP base, who Dick Cheney thinks should favor entertainer Rush Limbaugh over Four-Star General Colin Powell.

May 17, 2009 11:12 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Aunt Bea, the commentors at Box Turtle Bulletin did a nice job of disecting Steele's BS and demonstrating how he's a fool and a liar.


http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/05/16/11469#comment-40859

May 17, 2009 12:17 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

This post has been removed by the author.

May 17, 2009 12:50 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Jim said "You need a license to drive a car, but anybody can have a child ...".

I always thought that was bizarre too. Given the horrific job so many parents do in "raising" their children this has to be society's greatest oversight. I grew up in a violent household with fierce competition for resources, but its okay, the emotional and physical scars don't mattter because our parents went to church every Sunday and forced us to go along to and partake in ritualized cannibalism. My parents saw us as burdensom possessions rather than people, but at least they didn't use birth control and limit themselves to a number of children they could manage - that would have been wrong. Growing up I saw many of my friends also had violent and dysfunctional parents.

It was clear to me at an early age that parents can't be trusted to do a decent job of raising children. What is sorely needed is an education system that teaches students anger management and how to raise children. Education should be a preparation for life and yet at is stands there couldn't be a bigger hole in that training. Raising children is probably the most important task anyone will every undertake with the most serious of consequences and yet we provide no mandatory training at all. That's absolutely unforgiveable.

May 17, 2009 12:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"the problem isn't what Pelosi, the minority leader at the time knew"

no, it's that she attacks a position she knows to be correct in order to score political points

her concern is not for her country but her personal ambition

Obama is at least doing the right thing if he hasn't brought himself to apologize yet

Pelosi is bad for her country and will, hopefully, not be re-elected

even her old buddy, Leon Panetta, has denounced her

"My parents saw us as burdensom possessions rather than people"

maybe you were more a burden than a people

you must admit, you are somewhat of a pill

May 17, 2009 1:53 PM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

Let's hope our current president realizes this.

Our current President is the one who said that his plans could change as more information becomes available. This stands in stark contrast to our last President who believed he should stick with a decision no matter what new information indicates. What we should hope for is that our current President never repeats the gross mistakes our last President made. For instance, GQ has published Rumsfeld/Cheney/Bush's belief the battle for Iraq was a holy war in living color for all to see. Read all about it here.

Pelosi didn't attack anyone. She reported what she was told at a meeting in 2002, which was confirmed by Senator Bob Graham), and which has been contradicted by notes of that meeting prepared under the Bush/Cheney administration that is better known for smoke and mirror lies than for honesty. The CIA in 2002 was under orders to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, whether it existed or not, and was under orders to use the torture method of waterboarding to obtain it.

McClatchydc.com reports:

...Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who advocated the use of sleep deprivation, isolation and stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning, insist that they were legal.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document....
and lied to Pelosi and everyone else except for a few high ranking Republicans about it.

May 17, 2009 2:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"and lied to Pelosi"

This is the same scurrilous allegation that Pelosi has made.

Trouble for you is that the CIA's story has been much more consistent than Pelosi's.

Face it, she's lying about the brave men who have protected us the last eight years.

She needs to find another career.

May 17, 2009 11:48 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Days after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., charged that she was misled by the CIA in 2002 about the use of waterboarding, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, says he wants her to provide evidence that the agency did so or apologize for her accusation.

May 18, 2009 7:53 AM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

I'm glad the CIA has new leadership. Maybe now they will do their jobs and ignore input from the Vice President's Office suggesting "waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner, a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection. "

Read Robert Wendrum's investigative report, "Cheney's Role Deepens".

Listen to Rachel Maddow interview Robert Wendrum and Charles Duelfer, a former UN Weapons Inspector here.

Pelosi is right, we need a Truth Commission.

"Boehner.... wants...evidence that the agency did so or [not]"

Good, then Boehner should support creating a Truth Commission so all the evidence can be evaluated.

May 18, 2009 9:57 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I'm glad the CIA has new leadership."

The new leadership is an old friend of Nancy Pelosi and he says she's lying.

She's attacked a vital agency defending the American people without basis.

She should resign.

She can't be trusted in a leadership role.

May 18, 2009 2:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Andrea-not anon
I think people who post as anon need to resign and find somewhere else to post.

May 18, 2009 3:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

maybe Nancy can post here with all the free time she's sure to have in the future

May 18, 2009 3:23 PM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

The new [CIA] leadership is an old friend of Nancy Pelosi and he says she's lying.

No he didn't. Here's what CIA Chief Leon Panetta said in his memo to CIA employees:

Message from the Director: Turning Down the Volume

There is a long tradition in Washington of making political hay out of our business. It predates my service with this great institution, and it will be around long after I’m gone. But the political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress.

Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing “the enhanced techniques that had been employed.” Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.My advice—indeed, my direction—to you is straightforward: ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission. We have too much work to do to be distracted from our job of protecting this country.

We are an Agency of high integrity, professionalism, and dedication. Our task is to tell it like it is—even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it.

Leon E. Panetta
Panetta said that it is Congress who must determine "what happened" at CIA Congressional briefings, not him.

Pelosi is not the only member of Congress claiming the CIA's notes of the September 2002 meeting are not accurate. Here's NPR's report on what Senator Bob Graham, prior Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said about his CIA briefings in 2002-3:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accused the CIA of misleading her in 2002 about its use of waterboarding during the Bush administration.

Now her fellow Democrat, former Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, is also disputing the CIA's version of the briefings that he received at the time. Graham was then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, while Pelosi was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

How Many Briefings?

Graham is known as a meticulous note-taker and has maintained a daily log that fills hundreds of spiral notebooks, which now reside at the University of Florida Library of Florida History.

"Several weeks ago, when this issue started to bubble up, I called the CIA and asked for the dates in which I had been briefed," Graham tells Robert Siegel. "They gave me four: two in April of '02, two in September."

Graham says he consulted his logs "and determined that on three of the four dates there was no briefing held."

He adds: "On one date, Sept. 27, '02, there was a briefing held and, according to my notes, it was on the topic of detainee interrogation."

Graham says the CIA was initially reticent when he told the agency what he had found in his notes.

"They said, 'We will check and call back,'" Graham recalled. "When they finally did a few days later, they indicated that I was correct. Their information was in error. There was no briefing on the first three of four dates."Graham says the agency offered no explanation regarding how it came up with the other dates.

'No Discussion Of Waterboarding'

The Sept. 27, 2002, briefing occurred about three weeks after the briefing in which the CIA says it told Pelosi about the use of waterboarding, a technique also described as simulated drowning. Graham, like Pelosi, says waterboarding was not mentioned during his briefing.

"There was no discussion of waterboarding, other excessive techniques or that they had applied these against any particular detainees," he says.Pelosi has charged that she was misled by the CIA. Graham puts it another way.

"Nothing that I can recall being said surprised me or has subsequently proven to be incorrect," he says. "It was a matter of omission, not commission."Graham says he is not surprised at the CIA's claims, noting that within a week of its Sept. 27 briefing, the agency presented to the Senate Intelligence Committee its National Intelligence Estimate of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which was later shown to be flawed.

"I'm not impressed with the credibility of the CIA as it was being led in 2002," Graham says. "I think it had become an agency that instead of following the admonition to speak truth to power, it was trying to speak what it thought power wanted to hear."
So Senator Graham's detailed notes of his CIA briefings corroborate Speaker Pelosi's claim that in September 2002, the CIA did not relate they had waterboarded a terrorism suspect 83 times in August, the month before. Who are these unnamed CIA employees who say otherwise?

And to make the picture complete, here are the signers of a typical conference committee report early in Bush's presidency:

F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., (R, WI)
Henry Hyde, (R, Ill)
Steve Chabot, (R, OH)
Orrin Hatch, (R UT)
Rick Santorum, (R, PA)
Mike DeWine, (R, OH)


Do you see any Democrats on the list? No, because for the first 5-6 years of Bush's presidency, until the 2006 midterm election losses by the GOP made it obvious that the country was no longer buying what Republicans were selling, Democrats were routinely *not* included in the Congressional conference committees, where differences between House and Senate versions of a bill are resolved.

Pelosi's and Graham's version of what they were NOT told by the CIA in 2002 fits right in with the way the GOP governed without any input from Democrats at that time.

Thank goodness the new CIA director is aware that "It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress" so maybe such omissions to Congress members won't happen again. Let's have an investigation, a Truth Commission and get all the facts about what did happen out in the open, where they belong.

May 19, 2009 10:17 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

most of Pelosi's supporters have the sense to shut up and hope this all blows over

it takes a certain crazed personality to continue to blatantly defend such hypocrisy

it takes a crazy old bat to defend an irresponsible politician

it takes a village to disown the politician

this past week will haunt Pelosi for some time

May 19, 2009 12:06 PM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

I stand with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and call for a Truth Commission to uncover the facts of the Bush Administration's illegal use of torture.

The only people hoping this call for a Truth Commission blows over are the Bush-leaguers who prefer operating under cover of secrecy and are blinded by the disinfecting light of disclosure.

May 19, 2009 1:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

sounds like the one whose words were illuminated this week was fancy-talkin' Nancy Pelosi

May 19, 2009 2:21 PM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

It looks like the party who said, "WE WERE WRONG" was the CIA:

"Several weeks ago, when this issue started to bubble up, I called the CIA and asked for the dates in which I had been briefed," Graham tells Robert Siegel. "They gave me four: two in April of '02, two in September."

Graham says he consulted his logs "and determined that on three of the four dates there was no briefing held."

He adds: "On one date, Sept. 27, '02, there was a briefing held and, according to my notes, it was on the topic of detainee interrogation."

Graham says the CIA was initially reticent when he told the agency what he had found in his notes.

"They said, 'We will check and call back,'" Graham recalled. "When they finally did a few days later, they indicated that I was correct. Their information was in error. There was no briefing on the first three of four dates."


We need a Truth Commission to investigate.

May 19, 2009 5:53 PM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

Congressman, CIA dispute briefing list accuracy


By PAMELA HESS, AP

WASHINGTON -A top House Democrat raised new questions Tuesday about the accuracy of the CIA's account of congressional briefings on severe interrogation techniques. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin said a staff aide that the CIA listed as attending a 2006 briefing was instead barred from the session.

The CIA stood behind its version of the briefing.

In a letter Monday to CIA Director Leon Panetta, Obey questioned CIA records that show a committee aide, Paul Juola, attended a Sept. 19, 2006, briefing that included a discussion of 13 harsh interrogation techniques.

According to Obey, Juola accompanied members of Congress to the briefing room, but was told by then-CIA Director Michael Hayden and another CIA official that he could not attend.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said Juola was at the September meeting as well as a meeting in October 2007 where enhanced interrogations were discussed.

"As the agency has pointed out more than once, its list compiled in response to congressional requests reflects the records it has. These are notes, memos and recollections, not transcripts and recordings."

Obey's spokeswoman, Kirstin Brost, said the CIA was wrong.

"Our records are clear. Our records are detailed. They are mistaken," she said.

Reps. Bill Young, R-Fla., and John Murtha, D-Pa., are listed by the CIA as attending the briefing, though Murtha left before the discussion of interrogation techniques. Calls to Young's and Murtha's offices were not returned.

Panetta acknowledged in a May 6 letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, that the CIA's list detailing the 40 congressional briefings on interrogation techniques held since 2002 may not be accurate.

"In the end, you and the committee will have to determine whether this information is an accurate summary of what actually happened," Panetta wrote.

Retired Florida Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, the former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he learned last month that internal CIA records erroneously showed that he had been briefed twice in April 2002 and twice in September 2002 on harsh interrogations.

Graham disputed three of those meetings based on his meticulous daily journals. The CIA's list of congressional briefings does not contain references to those disputed meetings...


Drip drip drip
Glub Glub Glub

May 19, 2009 7:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow!

A top Democrat in Congress, lying to make Pelosi version look credible?

Who saw that coming?

When will we start arguing about the definition of "is"?

May 19, 2009 9:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

yeah, who saw that coming?

looks like crazy old Bea is on one of her benders where she thinks every time some slimy Democratic politician agrees with her, it's a breaking event

May 19, 2009 9:56 PM  
Anonymous ha-ha said...

woo boy

who saw that coming?

rofl

May 19, 2009 9:59 PM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

The CIA corroborated Senator Graham's account that 3 of the 4 dates they told him he'd met with them did not happen. Once a full independent investigation is completed, the rest of the truth will be known.

But if you think Democrats are the only people complaining about the bungling of the war in Iraq, you better lookout! Incoming!!

Jerry H. Jones, then a special assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and later serving as an expert on transitional government to Rumsfeld’s successor, Robert Gates spoke with David Rose, who wrote an informative piece in Vanity Fair, Heads in the Sand about yet another mistake made by the Bush/Cheney administration's handling of the occupation of Iraq, this one unforgivably costly.

The history books will record that the so-called Sunni Awakening—when many of Iraq’s Sunni tribes, in return for money and other considerations, began cutting deals with American forces and turned away from their nationalist insurgency—got under way in late 2006. The Sunni tribes, concentrated in Anbar province, had long been the backbone of the insurgency. In the Iraq of Saddam Hussein, Sunni Arabs had exercised a domination far out of proportion to their numbers (some 20 percent of the population), and after the American-led invasion, suddenly excluded from power and influence, they exacted a bloody revenge. After the Awakening, the Sunnis helped obliterate al-Qaeda’s networks in most of Sunni Iraq, a development that many believe did more to dampen the violence than the subsequent “surge” in American troop numbers. Having reached a peak in 2006 and early 2007, the casualty rates for combatants and civilians quickly plummeted.

What the history books should also record, revealed here for the first time, is that the Sunni insurgents had offered to come to terms with the Americans 30 months earlier, in the summer of 2004, during secret talks with senior U.S. officials and military commanders...

The Sunni Awakening, when it did finally come, provided welcome relief, says Jerry Jones. But the cost of delay is quantifiable. “From July ’04 to mid-’07,” he points out, “you can directly attribute almost all those K.I.A. [killed in action] in the Sunni regions of Iraq to this fatal error, and if we hadn’t been fighting the Sunni, we’d have had a lot more resources for dealing with Shia militia leaders like Moqtada al-Sadr in places such as Baghdad. It didn’t have to happen. Those lives did not have to be lost.” To put the matter concretely: if the compromises accepted later by the Bush administration had been accepted when a rapprochement was first broached by the Sunnis, in 2004, some 2,000 Americans and thousands more Iraqis might not have died...
Click the link above if you care to read the rest.

I predict that Jones will not be the last former Bush/Cheney administration official to tell the truth about what went on behind closed doors.

May 20, 2009 8:02 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

no new truth, Bea

we all know that Rumsfeld mismanaged the war and Petraeus turned things around

that's not what we talking about, though

we were discussing Pelosi's lie that she didn't know about water-boarding of admitted terrorists and her attack on the CIA:

"In a little over 100 days, the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress have delivered a series of blows to the pride and morale of the Central Intelligence Agency.


Whatever your view of waterboarding, the response of intelligence professionals following Sept. 11 was impressive.

Within days, the CIA had linked up with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and begun preparations to remove the Taliban.

The counterterrorism center run of out CIA headquarters was the war on terror in the months after the attacks, making daily progress in capturing high-value targets.

Now the president and his party have done much to tarnish those accomplishments.

So much for the thanks of a grateful nation.

Traveling recently in Iraq, Pelosi noted, "If we're going to have a diminished military presence, we'll have to have an increased intelligence presence."

This has been the main Democratic argument against the whole idea of the war on terror -- that guns and bombs are no substitute for timely information.

"This war on terror is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement operation," Sen. John Kerry once claimed.

But this object of praise -- intelligence-gathering -- is again the object of liberal assault.

"To put the matter at its simplest," writes Gabriel Schoenfeld, "American elites have become increasingly discomfited over the last decades by the very existence of a clandestine intelligence service in a democratic society."

But our democratic society still depends on intelligence officers -- just as surely as it depends on our men and women in uniform."

The electorate is watching.

May 20, 2009 8:37 AM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

The electorate elected CHANGE in the US government from state houses to the White House in part because of the corruption and politicization of the CIA by the neocons of the Bush/Cheney Admininstration.

Now that the veil of secrecy is being lifted, we are learning how badly the neocons compromised that agency. We need to let the full disinfecting light of day in so we can clean house and do better in the future.

We must never forget:

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said...

"As the agency has pointed out more than once, its list compiled in response to congressional requests reflects the records it has. These are notes, memos and recollections, not transcripts and recordings."...Panetta acknowledged in a May 6 letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, that the CIA's list detailing the 40 congressional briefings on interrogation techniques held since 2002 may not be accurate.


Let's ensure that future briefings are properly recorded as to participants and topics discussed so the CIA won't report inaccuracies like meetings that didn't take place and topics that weren't covered in the future.

May 20, 2009 10:56 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The electorate elected CHANGE in the US government from state houses to the White House in part because of the corruption and politicization of the CIA"

no, they didn't

"we are learning how badly the neocons compromised that agency"

no, we aren't

for the most part, Obama has reviewed CIA operations and supported maintaining the status quo

that's the big story and why President Bush is owed a public apology from Obama and the Democrat gang on Capitol Hill

just yesterday, the Senate, full of Democrats, voted to keep Guantanamo open to give special treatment to confessed terrorists who have declared war on the U.S.

they're not coming onto U.S. soil and getting the O.J. treatment

May 20, 2009 11:49 AM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

Oh brother Anon. You must be the only person in the world who does not accept the fact that the US electorate voted for change in November 2008. Have fun imagining nothing has changed since the "decades" of GOP power you so love to reminisce about. The GOP gained absolute power thanks to the Supreme Court, absolutely abused it by squandering the national treasury among other valuables like the respect our allies used to have for us, and lost the trust of the electorate who demanded and elected change.

Today barely 20% of Americans identify with the GOP. One in five!

With the remaining GOP base seeming to be mostly people like you, the Arlin Specter types, the Colin Powell types, and even the Meghan and Roberta McCain types are reevaluating whether or not today's GOP is in line with their views anymore. Some of them are deciding they can no longer call themselves Republicans.

But here you are, stuck on the tried and failed GOP tactics of yesterday -- raging about abortion, LGBT civil rights and public education.

One in five!

May 20, 2009 9:55 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"You must be the only person in the world who does not accept the fact that the US electorate voted for change in November 2008."

Oh, I think they voted for change. I just don't think the CIA was a factor.

"Have fun imagining nothing has changed since the "decades" of GOP power you so love to reminisce about."

Well, under the category of dealing with captured terrorists, nothing much has. After campaigning against Bush policies with hyperbole, Obama has changed not much.

"The GOP gained absolute power thanks to the Supreme Court, absolutely abused it by squandering the national treasury"

Have you looked at Obama's budget forecast for the next then years?

"among other valuables like the respect our allies used to have for us,"

Actually, that's not much different than it ever was. We had better relations with some, worse with others. It's always fluid. Obama gets alot of attention but not much "respect". They laugh off his proposals.

"Today barely 20% of Americans identify with the GOP. One in five!

With the remaining GOP base seeming to be mostly people like you,"

Things are not always as they seem. I, for example, am a registered Democrat. Someday, they'll return to the John Kennedy model.

You remember him. He committed America to pay any price, bear any burden to remove thugs like Saddam Hussein and lowered taxes on investors to spur economic growth.

May 21, 2009 5:30 AM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

just yesterday, the Senate, full of Democrats, voted to keep Guantanamo open to give special treatment to confessed terrorists who have declared war on the U.S.

they're not coming onto U.S. soil and getting the O.J. treatment



No, they'll get more like the Charles Manson treatment or the Unibomber treatment when cooler heads prevail and our prisoners of war are incarcerated here.

There are already eager and willing takers:

Earlier this month, Hardin's [Montana] town council voted unanimously to offer the US government a deal: Send Hardin the [Gitmo] detainees that most foreign countries and other cities the US are afraid to take.

"Why not us?" Smith asks. "They've got to go somewhere."

He dismisses security concerns over housing inmates former Bush administration officials famously described as "the worst of the worst".

"We have some very hardened criminals in our own country that have committed some heinous crimes, and they are in communities all across this country," Smith argues.

May 21, 2009 6:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"No, they'll get more like the Charles Manson treatment or the Unibomber treatment when cooler heads prevail and our prisoners of war are incarcerated here."

No, they won't.

They're not coming.

Not even a Democratically-controlled Congress is that stupid.

May 21, 2009 12:53 PM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

That's great Anon. Now you are calling the town council of Hardin, Montana, who voted to offer the US a deal to house GITMO prisoners in their prison, "stupid."

Are they deviants too, or just stupid?

May 21, 2009 4:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

no, I said Congress is smart to recognize that Guantanamo is the perfect place to house confessed and unrepentant terrorists while the war on terror continues

May 22, 2009 12:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

oh, and I was also saying that you're stupid

May 22, 2009 12:07 PM  

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