...but on this, he's not. The War on Terror is over. It's time to put the genie back into the bottle. We've got to scale back executive power and uphold the Constitution. When the President claims the right to blatantly violate Due Process of Law, then something is seriously wrong. No American on US soil should ever face death from above under any circumstances. Everyone has the right to be presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law. It's time for this shit to end.

The ACLU and several democrats and republicans.  Who is not?  Linday Graham and John McCain!  They need to retire and what is wrong with the GOP, trying their hardest to fuck up the GOP again with a Jeb Bush in office.


"When true liberals that care about civil rights and civil liberties and the Tea Party conservatives who fight for the Constitution and our inalienable rights realize they are virtually fighting the same battle, there will be a great realignment of the political landscape.

This realignment will create the most powerful force for liberty the world has ever known.

For this to occur however, the Tea Party conservatives must leave the comfort of the crony country club of the GOP and liberals must be willing to walk away from the crony corporatists of the Democrat Party, including it's leader Barack Obama." Judge Andrew Napolitano

   Dear Senator Paul:

   It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: "Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?" The answer to that question is no.

   Sincerely,

   Eric Holder
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/holders-letter-rand-paul-no-us-cant-use-drone-kill-citizen-not-engaged-combat-us-soil_706587.html

Not by a long shot.  As to the rest, I agree with you.  Rand Paul is an asshole, but he's right to question the domestic drone policy.  And he should be questioning the Patriot Act (an ironic name only a politico could have coined), which Obama is responsible for making even stronger than Bush did.  McCain and Graham are two of the biggest weasels in the humorously dubbed "Greatest Deliberative Body in the World."  What a fucking joke.
But the world is rife with terrorists.  Especially in the Middle East.  We need drones over there because we can't put boots on the ground everywhere to go after them.  The only reason you can vapor about the War on Terror being over is because the Bad Guys are so busy trying to hide from drones they don't have much time to plan and carry out complex attacks.  Even so, there are enough of them to pull of the attack on the gas plant in Algeria a month or so a go that killed dozens, including some Americans.  But perhaps you missed that one.
So eat this!  Fucker!

wording, not in combat.  In combat with who?  they are the ones buying up the aminution, trying their damnest to take gun rights, and stock piling coffins.  I told you awhile back they are stock piling coffins in Madison Ga.  and you didn't believe me when I said the land is being leased by the CDC.  Do you believe me now?  That they are using goverment agencies like Social Security to buy the amminution?  They are either expecting civil unrest, or want it to happen.  

Obama is dangerous, but he is not doing all of this alone!  John McCain is a very, very dangerous man too.

"When the President claims the right to blatantly violate Due Process of Law, then something is seriously wrong."

You fucking voted for him.


You're Welcome
GOP = For God and Country

I agree with the terrorist part of your post.

Also I still maintain that with some training and guidance you could be a good conservative.


Thank you
2013 = 28

I maintain that, with years of re-training plus many psychotropic drugs, you could become a barely acceptable Liberal.  Come to the Dark Side!  But if you can't look at decades of flip-flops by McCain and Graham and see that they are weasels of the first order, then there is no hope for you.  Glad you enjoyed the Kool Ade!  LOL!
2013=28 (probably not, but one can hope).

...I only vote for humans....

-- Modified on 3/7/2013 7:16:06 PM

Not sure terrorists hiding out of uniform are covered by the geneva convention...

to obtain information commits a war crime under US criminal law.

     The US statute thus defines torture as:

(A) Torture. - The act of a person who commits, or conspires or attempts to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason based on discrimination of any kind.

     So absolutely anyone who tortured a terrorist or conspired or ordered this- even if to get information about Osama Bin laden - committed a war crime under US law.

   Now, it is not accurate to say that “water boarding is a war crime period” bc at one time we waterboarded our own special forces as part of training exercises and single acts of waterboarding may not reach the severe pain threshold.  But there can be no dispute that waterboarding someone 189 times in a month under circumstances where the guy does not know if he is going to be killed or not - as we did to one of the terrorists - is torture.

      That is why those CIA torture tapes disappeared so quickly. And if we assume Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney ordered or conspired to do this - notwithstanding their label "enhanced interrogation techniques" - yes they committed a war crime and the John Yoo "legal justification" memo would not be a defense.

...starting a war on falsified information that killed more than 100,000 people, including thousands of Americans.

They have lost site of what conservative values are and have been to compromised by inside the beltway mentality.

The party is ready to move in a different direction and they are just in the way.

I get its against US laws but do US laws apply outside the country, to Gitmo, Iraq and Afganistan. Signatories of the Third Geneva Convention and Fourth Geneva Convention officially agree not to torture prisoners in armed conflicts. The arguement is it doesn't apply to terrorists.


Torture, according to the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture (an advisory measure of the UN General Assembly) is:


...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions. --UN Convention Against Torture[5]

       It appears to exclude:
1. gangs, hate groups, rebels or terrorists who ignore national or international mandates;
2.random violence during war; and
3.punishment allowed by national laws, even if the punishment uses techniques similar to those used by torturers such as mutilation or whipping when practiced as lawful punishment. Some professionals in the torture rehabilitation field believe that this definition is too restrictive and that the definition of politically motivated torture should be broadened to include all acts of organized violence.

If the war in 2001 had been put to a popular vote it would have been approved simply because of the fact Iraq and Afganistan had terrorist training camps and allowed them to exist. Its surprising how quickly the hurt and sentiment that some one needed to pay after 9/11. The fact is 9/11 happened, 3000+ americans died and a war was going to happen regaurdless. Its 12 years later and its easy to forget the hurt and anger of the average american at that time. I'm not justifying staying there and rebuilding the country but using one piece of information to disqualify every reason for the war is idiotic.
     Japan and Germanies plans to invade the USA were a major arguement for us getting involved in WW2. Since WW2 it has been proven that it wasnt really a true threat and japan and germany had no imediate plans for an invasion. Using your logic we should have stayed out of WW2?
     Would you have just let Bin Laden walk away?

Michael Hayden, Bush's last CIA director, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently wrote, "As late as 2006, fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of Al Qaeda came from those interrogations." Former CIA Director George Tenet has said, "I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than [what] the FBI, the [CIA], and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us." Former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has said, "We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened."

I see no reason at all to doubt the sincerity of Dennis Blair, Obama's own national intelligence director, who said in an April 16 memo to his staff that "high value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding" of Al Qaeda.

Blair later qualified this by adding, "There is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means." But a reasonable person might imagine that it would take more than sweet talk, mind games, and lollipops to get hardened terrorists to sing.

"I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past," Blair added, "but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time." His honesty is commendable. In this fevered town, in this bitter time, Blair's empathy for former officials who went to extremes to protect the country could bring a mob to his door carrying "war criminal" signs.

not Afghanistan.  First of all, no one ever accused Bush of lying to create a pretext for us to invade Afghanistan, unless it was the crazies who thought the US government brought down the Twin Towers as a pretext.  We all know the reason was 9/11 and most (including myself) strongly supported the invasion.  How you could conflate the two wars and imagine I was talking about Afghanistan is amazing.  Just to be crystal clear, I was talking only about 2003, a fact that was screamingly obvious to everyone but you.
And it's hardly news that most sentient beings know Bush/Cheney put pressure on the CIA to determine Saddam was developing WMDs which never existed.
Please try not to use the word "idiotic" when posting things that are, well, idiotic.
And speaking of idiotic, where did you get the idea that a major reason for the US entering WWII was because of Japanese and German plans to invade us?  Most experts believe neither country ever had a serious plan to invade the US.  Ever hear of Pearl Harbor?  Sheesh!

when you are talking about Gitmo - where Cuba retains sovereignty  but the US leases the land -  and Iraq and Afghanistan.

    But I don't see why you need to go there - the US war crimes statute I cited is especially designed to apply to terrorists as opposed to conflicts between nations. And who would prosecute the president of the United States for violation of international law anyway? Not the International Criminal Court of Justice which to date has just indicted a few banana dictators and I guess that Serbian guy but has done little but curtail their international travel (except for the Serbian guy whose name I can't spell) .

     And as to Bush and Cheney, their real war crimes probably lie in the area of extraordinary rendition where they sent bad guys to the Egyptian secret police for real - finger nail type pulling and genital crushing torture. Oh, did those files disappear too when Mubarik fell? What a coincidence.

       You don't think torture works? Oh, the Egyptians got some great stuff out of those guys based on what I've read. Of course, they got a lot of bad stuff too. And best of all, there is nobody left to complain about it.

"See http://www.gbn.org/ArticleDisplayServlet.srv?aid=2400&msp=1242 Here is an excerpt:":Along with other human rights organizations, The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis. Another 500,000 are estimated to have died in Saddam's needless war with Iran. Coldly taken as a daily average for the 24 years of Saddam's reign, these numbers give us a horrifying picture of between 70 and 125 civilian deaths per day for every one of Saddam's 8,000-odd days in power"

  If thats not enough reason to remove Saddam, there were other reasons. The training camps in northern Iraq, the number of Al-qaeda supporters, the number of taliban, its simplely idiotic to think the ONLY reason we went there was WMD. Thats all I stated.
   The statement about WW2 was it was an arguement used against continuing isolationism or a Japan only resolution to WW2. There are almost never single reasons behind a war, to think that Iraq was solely because of WMD is short sighted....
           

Have a beautiful weekend.

I wasnt really stating that torture is a good thing. I was stating that it wasnt specifically breaking the law to the point someone could ever prosecute. If you throw out the moral and ethical views on it which everyone is so quick to do when you talk about big banks or corporate america, I would contend that it'd be almost impossible to prove a criminal act. If the UN and the geneva convention dont specifically ban it....

The entire world knew Saddam was a bad guy, but that was never, ever, Bush/Cheney's argument that swayed the country and Congress to go to war in 2003.  "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," was what Condi Rice famously said.  Colin Powell's entire specious presentation to the UN was only, repeat only, about WMDs.  He later said he'd been betrayed.  Arguing anything else at this point is willful misrepresentation.  Bush himself came into office rejecting "nation building."  And the Congress never would have supported war simply because of Saddam's human rights record, which no one disputes.  We are not the world's cop.
All the human rights stuff, while true, was never Bush's argument so don't pretend it was.  That's a classic red herring.  Yes, there were a few Al Queda there but it was a tiny camp near Iran and totally under Saddam's thumb.  Some cited a meeting between a Saddam official and an Al Queda rep but it was determined the meeting never happened.  Oh, and what Taliban?  There were none in Iraq.
Not to mention Iraq was constrained by "no fly zones" in its north and south, plus UN inspectors continually looking for evidence of WMDs.  Yes, Saddam gamed them but despite that no evidence of a serious WMD program was ever found.  Even Cheney has been reduced to saying, in the current HBO documentary, basically, "Yeah, well, there were no WMDs there but they would have tried to get them at some point."  That's a reason to go to war, plus drop the ball in Afghanistan? Bullshit.
As for WWII, you've done nothing but acknowledge your argument was specious.  Just because someone might have said it does not make it an important reason we went to war.  Japan attacked us because we were refusing to ship them steel and oil.
Hint:  when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Did I miss something? The reasons listed on the Iraq Resolution are as follows...
  I would concead that WMD were a major factor and the war might not have happened if it werent for idea of them, but to conclude without a doubt that WMD were the only reason for the war is short sighted
  The resolution cited many factors to justify the use of military force against Iraq:[2][3]
Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire agreement, including interference with U.N. weapons inspectors.
Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and programs to develop such weapons, posed a "threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region."
Iraq's "brutal repression of its civilian population."
Iraq's "capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people".
Iraq's hostility towards the United States as demonstrated by the 1993 assassination attempt on former President George H. W. Bush and firing on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones following the 1991 Gulf War.
Members of al-Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq.
Iraq's "continu[ing] to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations," including anti-United States terrorist organizations.
Iraq paid bounty to families of suicide bombers.
The efforts by the Congress and the President to fight terrorists, and those who aided or harbored them.
The authorization by the Constitution and the Congress for the President to fight anti-United States terrorism.
The governments in Turkey, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia feared Saddam and wanted him removed from power.
Citing the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, the resolution reiterated that it should be the policy of the United States to remove the Saddam Hussein regime and promote a democratic replacement.

statute not passed till august of 1996. So not US criminal violation at that time as far as I know.

Were there post August 1996 renditions to Egypt for torture? Probably a few but nothing like the Bush years where the CIA had a dedicated jet for rendition purposes.

Did Bill know? No hard evidence of this that I have read and I recall Bill was otherwise occupied during those last years.

You don't think we all know you lie your ass off about everything.

You're Welcome
GOP = For God and Country

You can cite the resolution 'til the cows come home, but if you really believe anything would have been done in the absence of the WMD lies, then you are hopelessly lost.  Please enjoy living in your dream world, but most of us don't share your delusions.  I'm done with you.

I hated george bush and am a democrat. I did spend 2.5 yrs in iraq with the army engineer corp from 04-06 18 months as a civilian after and  do think there were other reasons for being there. It just as one sided to say thats the only reason for the war. If that was it why stay there 10 yrs after they didnt find anything? Not that that is right either.

Just one more red herring.  The fact that you served in Iraq (which I respect) does not give you any greater insight into why we went there and why it took too long to get out.  Both reasons have to do with politics and have nothing to do with proving your case.  Once Bush got us there he kept troops there to prove he hadn't made a huge mistake to begin with.  Obama inherited it and got us out as quickly as he could but was simply dealing with the hand he was dealt.  None of this has anything to do with justifying going to war there to begin with.  You are seriously confused.  Sorry about that.

http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/did-democrats-believe-saddam-hussein-had-weapons-of-mass-destruction-did-they-support-going-to-war/question-1975803/?link=ibaf&q=democrats%20supporting%20the%20iraq%20war%20searching%20for%20weapons%20of%20mass%20destruction

directed solely at idiots who doesn’t know shit about the constitution starting with constitution itself. The Supreme Court has the authority to declare any law passed by anywhere in this land constitutional or not. It is in the constitution idiots.

Natural born citizens know very little about the constitution compared to naturalized citizens. Because, one has to learn and the other believes they know it because of their birth.

If Rand Paul didn’t know, CIA cannot operate within the borders of United States and the President cannot declare war on his own, he needs to resign. Only Congress has the authority to declare war. Politically astute move to placate ignorance tea party yes, substantive stand, absolutely not.

Suggest you take some time reading the constitution, it is available on line instead of repeating what you hear on Fox News.

By the way Fox owned WSJ took Rand Paul to task over this and basically told him to go read the constitution.

That act from 1998 has nothing, repeat, nothing to do with how Bush sold the 2003 war to Congress and the American people.  Citing it as a relevant point simply reveals how out of touch you are on this subject.  You keep trying to make the same point, over and over, that because Saddam was long known as a bad man that was an important reason we went to war.  What is obvious to everyone but you is if you piled up all those other reasons on top of one another, absent Bush's lies and distortions about WMDs, Congress and the people would never have supported the war.  I am really tired of repeating myself on this and am done debating the issue with you.

Time line. Its long but read it, and tell me the only reason ever given before the war was wmd.
http://faculty.las.illinois.edu/salthaus/largio_thesis.pdf