If Obama cedes ground on torture to Cheney, we'll all pay a heavy price (Sickening)

The London Guardian ^ | May 24, 2009 | Gary Younge

[2ndDivisionVet]

"Every government ­assumes deeds and ­misdeeds of the past," writes Hannah Arendt in Eichmann and the Holocaust. "It means hardly more, generally speaking, than that every generation, by virtue of being born into a historical continuum, is burdened by the sins of the fathers as it is blessed with the deeds of the ancestors."

For Barack Obama this cuts both ways. Talented as he is, he looks much more so when compared with the man who preceded him. Just by showing up and stringing a few coherent sentences together, he embodies an improvement. To earn acclaim in these early months, he hasn't had to do anything good. He merely had to announce that he would stop doing things that were bad.

On the other hand, he has inherited the scarred landscape of his predecessor's tenure. Bush's wars, banks, car companies, secret prisons and untried prisoners are now his. As the candidate he may have promised change, but as the president he must also simulate some sense of continuity. Soaring ­rhetoric, however hopeful about the future, cannot erase the past, which has a habit of remaining with us.

Herein lies the tension in Obama's deeply flawed attempts to come to terms with America's recent disgraceful record of torture and detainment. As a candidate he was consistent on two points. First, he was opposed to torture and would close Guantánamo Bay. "I believe that we must reject torture ­without equivocation because it does not make us safe, it results in unreliable intelligence, it puts our troops at risk, and it contradicts core American ­values."

The Author

[2ndDivisionVet]

I see not all the British press have finished quaffing the Obama Kool-aid.

[golfisnr1]

“Herein lies the tension in Obama’s deeply flawed attempts to come to terms with America’s recent disgraceful record of torture and detainment”

I find this statement disgraceful and an untruth.

[Shady]

“Talented as he is,”
Lost me right there. More BO BS.

[Clint Williams]

How many FReepers would resist the application of torture to registered sex offenders?

Okay. Then terrorists?

[Billthedrill]

Bush's wars, banks, car companies, secret prisons and untried prisoners are now his.

Uh...Bush's car companies? Last I heard they were still in private hands before 0bama came along. Untried prisoners? When in human history have prisoners of war ever had a trial?

The author is an idiot who writes for the Guardian, if that isn't redundant.

[Islander7]

Torture is listening to 0bama attempt to make an intelligent point without the aid of his teleprompter.

[Sam Clements]

This guy doesn’t know what he is talking about.

[cubreporter]

WE WON’T. The Terrorist will though.

[Carl LaFong]

Didn’t that guy used to be one of the ‘Fat Boys’?

[y6162]

“I see not all the British press have finished quaffing the Obama Kool-aid”

They’d be a lot more credible if they complained about real acts of torture. Otherwise, this is just anti American carping.

[Brilliant]

Cheney is not arguing for torture. He’s arguing for waterboarding, which is not torture.

[telebob]

Any leftist, anywhere in the world, is nothing more than an intellectual whore. Lying is mothers’ milk to a lefty and hypocracy is second nature.

I never believe anything out of a lefties mouth or brain. It is all merely posturing against their enemies. Whatever they are complaining about, they’d do at the drop of a hat if it suited their ends.

[RoadKingSE]

Just by showing up and stringing a few coherent sentences together, he embodies an improvement.

Abapparently thibis moboron is habaving the sabame diffibiculty lebetting go of hibis Bush Derabangement Syndrome as his mebessiah Zeber0.

No surprise. He be a journalist. Hey, hey, hey!

[2ndDivisionVet]

I think serious sex offenders should be housed in work camps in the wilds of Alaska, far from any communities. They would grow their own food, work in trades, etc. We could rotate military policeman in to guard them.

[BenLurkin]

What “torture”?

[freekitty]

OK, where is that big old BS meter.

[bitterohiogunclinger]

“Talented as he is, he looks much more so when compared with the man who preceded him.”
Actually, I haven't seen the first sign of any talent at all from Mr. Obama. He can't even string together a sentence without a teleprompter. Every single one of his policies is a socialist disaster in the making. And perhaps the idiot author should pay attention to facts and not buy into the B.S. rhetoric bandied about by the leftist Bush haters. Every single one of Bush's policies on the war, intelligence gathering, and detaining terrorists was spot on right. In fact, after whining about “illegal wiretaps” and other abuses, the same policies are still in place and still being used. The only difference is Obama’s world apology tour and ill conceived “order” to close Gitmo. Obama is a fool, but those that buy into his empty rhetoric are bigger fools than he.

[Cicero]

Gary Young is an idiot. If you want to know where he’s coming from, read this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/16/miners-strike-gary-younge-comment

[alloysteel]

“Just by showing up and stringing a few coherent sentences together....”

The TelePrompTer, and the battery of gnomes and trolls programming it, have been pretty good about staying on message.

What they have NOT been good at, is making that message relevant to anything in the real world.

No matter how many pretty phrases are strung together, the actions and the words are not in sync. While there are all sorts of comforting platitudes about things getting better and better over time, there is no roadmap for getting from HERE to THERE. In fact, there is no road. There simply is no congruence between the painted scene and and the crowded minefield we must stumble through.

We are out of money? Why, print some more! Disregarding Gresham’s Law....

The new counterfeit money drives out the old, value-backed money, and soon all of it is worthless.

The fabrications about Resident (Pres_ent) Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., or Barry Soetero, or Mr Michelle Robinson, or Sock-Puppet, being the son of an out-of-control teenager and a Kenyan exchange student, are also of counterfeit information. I want to see some DNA evidence.

[hemogoblin]

This is the same little toad who came through Roanoke back during the campaign, tracking the growing Obama phenomenon (pant pant pant) through the more benighted regions of the American South.

Now the phenomenon has been publicly proven "dumber" than his predecessor, and not only that, HE'S EVEN WRONGER ON EVERYTHING ELSE THAN HE WAS ON GITMO.