Posted on 11/30/2008 1:00:31 AM PST by FocusNexus
The president-elect has to take a stand on Bush's dark legacy.
A small and largely unnoticed spat among the transition planners for the president-elect, Barack Obama, broke out last week. It was the first genuinely passionate debate among the Obamaites and it centres on a terribly difficult and terribly important decision that will be among the first that Obama has to make.
How does he deal with the legacy of criminal actions of his predecessor's administration when it comes to detention, interrogation, abuse and torture of terror suspects? That has long hovered in the back of the minds of those of us who supported Obama, in large part because he alone had the moral authority to draw a line underneath the criminality of the George Bush-Dick Cheney years and restore credibility and honour to America's antiterror policies.
At the end of the second world war, US officials prosecuted Nazi lawyers and civilians who tortured no one themselves but came up with legal flimflam to turn war crimes into legal policy. Why not apply the same logic to Bush's legal architects - the men who declared the president was bound by no law and no treaty in subjecting prisoners to torture up to the very edge of death?
And the evidence we now have, undisputed evidence, proves already that war crimes were indeed committed - by the president and vice-president on down. I mean: why else Guantanamo Bay and secret black sites if the president believed he was obeying domestic American law?
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Andrew Sullivan is still senior editor of The New Republic?! He is just plain insane.
Obambi’s first problem was Mumbai .
He already said nothing about it !
Related thread:
Bill Kristol: Before He Goes-What President Bush could accomplish in his final days in office
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2140286/posts
Bill calls for a blanket pardon, and so do I!!
Silly, he voted "present", doesn't that count?!!
If Obama does this it will be at least a year into his ‘rule’ before he ‘reluctantly’ acts.
His stand includes the hiring of Gates!
Sadly, Sullivan was not in the Taj Hotel on Nov 26,2008.
"Us"? What's this "us" stuff? Isn't the writer a Pom? He can no more support Obama than I can support McCain.
Andrew Sullivan deserves to be in the firing line of the next terrorist attack anywhere in the world — maybe in his last fleeting instant of life he would discover that his favorite jihadists are happy to go on killing so long as vermin like Sullivan want to enable the jihad.
Propagandist for the worst filth of humanity, that’s all that Sullivan is......
I think the fate of the civilized world hangs in the balance because of 0 .
Sigh - India you are alone - now
I think he did or actually I think it was an assistant that put out a statement on his behalf. I have a feeling Obama is going to sell out a lot of our Allies.
He wants Russia’s cooperation on Iran so he may look the other way when they threaten the Eastern European countries...Ukraine, Poland, Georgia.
In exchange for the Pakis cooperation on the Afghan border, he might end up giving India the shaft.
It was a statement . And it was horrible .
I think he really does not care .
For those like David Brock and Andrew Sullivan, penis trumps principle.
"I mean: why else..." Which is to say, this is unproven, non-evidence, slander, speculation and we have no proof, no genuine evidence, are calling legitimate interrogation (to prevent terrorist attacks) torture and this is another baseless assertion.
Which means this was printed for political purposes to undermine our security. In the light of what just happened in Mumbai, India, it beyond disgusting.
Everyone, please NOTE CORRECTION:
It was the UK Times that published the article, NOT the UK Telegraph — I erroneously misstated the source and blamed the UK Telegraph.
The link is correct, though.
Sorry.
I'd guess the Indians have done far worse to the people they've captured with their last “event”. No screaming of war crimes from you...
Here's a little morality quiz for you... Lets say you just captured a person that knows where a nuclear weapon was planted in a large city. That it will go off in 15 minutes. What do you do?
There's a little reality for you. Suck it up, be a man. You don't get second chances.
Yep. And as Coulter, I believe, wrote, it probably ain’t abuse or torture if you can pay to have strangers do it to you in America’s trendier cities.
You are correct. I am sure Bush and Company are showing the incoming team all the attacks that were foiled as a result of interrogation.
Bush is probably telling him, "...well, you can shut this down or you can answer for a major attack against a US city."
I understand he called on both sides to exercise restraint. Yet, a few months ago he said he would be willing to send troops into Pakistan to fight terrorism.
He will never side with India !
Of course there was no crime but that matters little to the idiots.
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