Month: February 2015

And they don’t even have a Bill of Rights

by digby

The UK has one of the most aggressive surveillance and police apparatuses in the Western world. It looks as though somebody has finally decided that they’ve gone too far:

The United Kingdom’s top surveillance agency has acted unlawfully by keeping details about the scope of its Internet spying operations secret, a British court ruled in an unprecedented judgment issued on Friday.

Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, was found to have breached human rights laws by concealing information about how it accesses surveillance data collected by its American counterpart, the National Security Agency.

The ruling was handed down by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, a special court that handles complaints related to covert surveillance operations conducted by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. In its 15-year history, the tribunal has never before upheld a complaint against any intelligence agencies.

The legal challenge was brought by human rights groups, including Privacy International and Liberty, following disclosures from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The groups alleged that GCHQ was unlawfully obtaining data through the NSA’s online spying program PRISM, which collects data stored by Internet giants such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo. The groups also focused on GCHQ’s role in obtaining private communications swept up by the NSA directly from internet cables, known as so-called “upstream” collection.

Somebody should inform some of our resident intellectuals who believe that the Snowden revelations meant nothing and that nobody with any sense cares about it.

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QOTW: President Obama

by digby

“Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

This simple statement of fact appears to be extremely controversial. Because Islamic extremists are the worst of the worstest that’s ever been in the whole history of the world. Plus Jesus. or something.

Honestly, this latest round of mau-mauing about how everyone has to not only agree that Islamic extremism is bad (yes!) but that it’s uniquely bad, worse than anything. That’s where I get off the train. Our president just attended a funeral for the King of a nation that routinely uses beheading for execution and sentences people to a thousand lashes as punishment for writing something it doesn’t like. They are among the richest people on the planet and are also among the most barbaric. And yet it was widely celebrated that the first lady, like many female Western officials before her, refused to wear the veil at the funeral as if that was boldly defiant. (Pay no attention to the billions of dollars that American companies make because we choose to ignore the beheadings and the floggings.)

ISIS is composed of a bunch of monstrous cretins. But they are members of the human species and the human species has a long history of being monstrous cretins. Even some nice American people have been monstrous cretins, as the president pointed out. Some of our closest current allies are monstrous cretins in exactly the same way members of ISIS are monstrous cretins. Making them into supernatural villains of unique barbarity is well … stupid. Not that that will stop anyone from doing it.

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“Excuse me, I happen to have myself right here”

by digby

Unbelievable.  Michael Cannon the rightwing lawyer behind the King vs burwell case appeared on a web cast in which he used the moderator’s reporting as evidence for his claims that the Democrats created a federal exchange for no good reason:

After Cannon finished his presentation, however, Rovner clarified what she did — and what she did not — report. “While that Texas letter did express concern about people not getting any benefits, they weren’t talking about subsidies,” Rovner explained.

Contrary to Cannon’s claim that the benefits of the Affordable Care Act hinge upon whether a state sets up its own exchange, Rovner noted that “in fact, the paragraph immediately prior” to the portion of her reporting that Cannon relies upon cuts against his argument. In that paragraph, Rovner quoted law professor and health policy expert Tim Jost saying that federally-run exchanges will provide a backstop against recalcitrant states — “if the state fails to do it, then the federal government is supposed to step in.” (The 11 Democrats agree with Jost’s reading of the Senate bill in their letter, which states that “[i]f the state does not set up the exchange, then the Secretary of Health and Human Services is required to set up an exchange for the state.”)

Nevertheless, Cannon continued to insist upon his own interpretation of Rovner’s report even after Rovner herself accused him of mischaracterizing her reporting. According to Cannon there is “no other plausible reading” of Rovner’s own reporting than the reading Cannon preferred.
(It should be noted that, even if Cannon’s reading of Rovner’s reporting were accurate, that still does not prove that the letter itself actually says what Cannon says that it says. To the contrary, it would only prove that Rovner might have misread the letter. Once again, the full text of the letter is available at this link so that our readers can independently verify what it says.)

Towards the end of the web debate, when Rovner and her co-panelists began to take questions from people who called into the webcast, a staffer from an advocacy group that supports the Affordable Care Act brought the dispute between Rovner and Cannon up again. Noting that Cannon has, in the past, retracted some of his claims about the Affordable Care Act after they were proven untrue, the caller asked whether Cannon would also retract his claim about Rovner’s reporting now that Rovner herself repudiated Cannon’s interpretation. “I know that, for some reason, you take your interpretation of her own work over hers,” the caller asked, “but I wonder if, with some reflection, you’ll decide that you should actually formally withdraw” the claim that Rovner’s reporting supports the plaintiffs’ view in King.

Cannon, however, was still unmoved. “If you can convince me that Julie’s interpretation of her own story is not contradicted by her own story, then I’ll be happy to make the change that you suggest.” Nevertheless, Cannon claimed, “no one has been able to do that, not even Julie herself.”

You don’t understand what you wrote, young lady!

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The Great Whitebread Hope does it again


by digby

I wrote a bit on Salon about the Great Whitebread Hope’s latest gaffe. That’s right, Scott Walker did it again.  This time he tried to change the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin to make it into some kind of vocational school and in the process attacked one of the most cherished state values, the Wisconsin Idea, beloved for over a hundred years. He does this stuff over and over again and yet the beltway persists in seeing him as a brilliant politician, even more brilliant than his Upper Midwest presidential hopeful forebears:

Walker seems to be thrilling the punditocracy even more than these bland Governors usually do. This undoubtedly has to do with the fact that he survived a recall effort and won re-election afterwards, which makes him in the eyes of the beltway some sort of giant slayer. But the fact is that he first won in the Democratic bloodbath of 2010 and then barely eked out a win in the next Democratic bloodbath of 2014. In the middle of those two off-year Republican landslides, he was recalled! No other Governor in the nation was recalled, but Scott Walker was and that somehow makes him a great moderate reformer who is a GOP national hero. By that logic, more Governors should want to be recalled so they can be admired for their political brilliance.

read on …

Deference must be shown
by Tom Sullivan

Somebody didn’t get the memo. For an exceptional people who celebrate their revolution to overthrow rule by kings and titled nobility, we have an amazing number who still believe they are entitled to deference. According to some in Washington, “entitlements” are bad. They make a people weak. And if there is anything (besides LGBT people) that makes their skin crawl and makes them reach for another grain alcohol and branch water, it’s weakness.

See, deference must be shown to “the job creators” — praised be their name — even when their invisible hands create no jobs. Deference must be shown to Wall Street titans, for without their wisdom, there would be no six- and seven-figure bonuses for selling fraudulent securities, and no taxpayer-funded bailouts. Behold them in their glory. Behold the power the royals wield over our late, great democracy. Psst. Kneel, willya?

Proper deference must be shown, too, towards the alpha dogs’ faith, a faith that justifies. Tolerated other faiths must know their place. Sadly, the Kenyan Pretender did not get the memo either. At the national prayer breakfast Thursday, President Obama said:

“Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history,” he told the group, speaking of the tension between the compassionate and murderous acts religion can inspire. “And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Blaspheme! Speaking in the prophetic voice was never much welcome in Old Testament times. Nor is it now. Pretty tame stuff for a prophet, too. But you can imagine the response:

Some Republicans were outraged. “The president’s comments this morning at the prayer breakfast are the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime,” said former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore (R). “He has offended every believing Christian in the United States. This goes further to the point that Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.”

Heretic! he cried. Anybody got a match?

Pretty thin-skinned for a people willing to dish it out with a shovel when it’s somebody else’s faith.

“There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency, that can pervert and distort our faith,” the prophetic voice continued.

Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, called Obama’s comments about Christianity “an unfortunate attempt at a wrongheaded moral comparison.”

What we need more, he said, is a “moral framework from the administration and a clear strategy for defeating ISIS,” the acronym for the Islamic State.

Because military strategy is what we go to prayer breakfasts for, after all.

Our moral framework collapsed when Americans cheered and defended the last administration for committing torture. Now you want the Muslim Pretender to rebuild it for you? It’s what prayer, fasting, and sackcloth and ashes are for, pal. That’s in a book you might be familiar with. They’re just not as much fun as a good, Christian ass whuppin’.

Sheesh. These guys can’t make up their minds whether they want their Christian country to act like Christ or to just “act” like it’s a Christian country. We wear Christianity the way a teenager wears an American Eagle hoodie and thinks it’s stylish.

Brian Williams’ RPG “Mistake” In Iraq Was A Wartime Gift 


by Spocko

Wednesday Travis J. Tritten at Stars and Stripes did an exclusive story about Brian William’s actual experience while in a helicopter in Iraq in 2003 vs. the narrative that he either helped create or failed to correct in the subsequent years.

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams admitted Wednesday he was not aboard a helicopter hit and forced down by RPG fire during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a false claim that has been repeated by the network for years.

The quick twitter take is to call Williams a liar, say he should be fired and bring up his daughter in Peter Pan and Girls for some bizarre reason.

That’s fun for one news cycle, but I wondered, “What can we learn from this story and how can we use it for change?”

My first step was to tweet to @Travis_Tritten to thank him and his sources, whom I will call Narrative Busters because Myth Busters is taken.  (I don’t want to call them Whistleblowers because we know what happens to them.)

How Is This “Mistake” Different?

Journalists and “journalists” get called out all the time by groups like Media Matters and comedians like Stewart and Colbert. Sometimes the media address their “mistakes,” often the critics are ignored.

What is different about this story is that it forced Williams (and NBC) to acknowledge his lie.  The reason it wasn’t ignored is because it came from another serious media player, Stars and Stripes. Especially interesting is that this player might not have run the story at a different time under a different administration.

I want to encourage more of this kind of work, especially if it is used to improve the quality of our media. What will it take?

Why Was this False Narrative Encouraged For So Long?  

Some have asked, “Why wasn’t this corrected sooner?” That’s easy to answer, William’s fabricated close call with a RPG on a chopper was part of the narrative about the war that the media created for itself and for Americans at home.

They were assisted by the military brass who knew a good story when they heard it, therefore they didn’t take steps to correct the record.  As they say, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

The lie about William’s getting shot down reinforced several ideas and narratives.

1) Iraq is a scary place and needs control. Reporters need to be embedded with “the troops” for their own protection. The green zone briefing tent gives the media what they need to know. Shorthand for staying put? “Remember what happened to Brian Williams.”

2) We need to fight these people, they are fighting us.

 “They aren’t throwing flowers and sweets at us you peace-loving hippies! They SHOT AT BRIAN WILLIAMS! Of COURSE we had to kill everyone in the area!” 

3) People with “skin in the game” sell the war better. Some in the military knew it was a lie, but why spoil Williams’ great story? “Let the baby have his bottle.”

4) Excitement! Ratings! Stories about people trying to kill rich innocent journalists are exciting! People at home can feel better about killing Iraq’s when America’s Favorite 30 Rock guest star is almost killed.

Getting the perspectives of the poor innocent Iraqis is boring and makes people at home feel bad. I’m falling asleep just typing that sentence.

5) The biggest relate-able celebrity is always used to pitch the story. Want to tell a story about the massive tsunami in another country? Tell the story of the white supermodel caught in it.

6) Use the “missing white woman” story for war. The decision by NBC and Williams to co-opt a real person’s experience was useful to get the public’s attention and empathy using someone they could relate to.

NBC and Williams might even have justified the lie saying it was representative of others’ real story that wouldn’t get covered without celebrity.

Who Kept This Narrative Going?

That the truth got out at all is rather astonishing, and I’m glad it did. Imagine if this encouraged other people to come forward to tell real war stories vs. the narrative myth created for positive public consumption?

Clearly this story could have been corrected many times in the past, but think about who would have had to do it and what they risked doing it earlier. Then think about how we can force earlier corrections.

Both the military brass and the NBC brass contributed to this “mistake.”

Military’s Role Promoting the Lie

Say you were there, either in Williams’ helicopter or the one actually forced down. When you see the story you go to your commanding officer and say, “That’s NOT what happened!” The officer thinks, “Does correcting this help or hurt our relationship with the media? Does it change the public’s perception of what is happening here?”

If the officer calls out Williams and asks for change what happens? Awkward! Maybe the officer just lets it slide and tells the solider to not bring it up since it’s true in general for people in some choppers, just not specifically for Williams.

Here’s the deal, the military media contacts aren’t the truth police, they aren’t NBC fact checkers. It’s not their job to get the media’s facts right. On the other hand, if the story made them look bad they would demand the truth, or negotiate some kind of deal. “We won’t tell anyone about your little fib, don’t tell anyone about our big lies.”

NBC’s Role Promoting the Lie

 Say you were a cameraman on the chopper with Williams and knew the story was BS. You tell the producer who thinks, does correcting this “mistake” help or hurt the story to the American public? What about NBC’s and Williams’ credibility?

How will the NBC brass feel finding out that the “brave reporter” story they have been hyping is a lie? Remember, NBC is the network who fired a top-rated money-making show because they didn’t want to be seen as anti-war.  So the cameraman lets it slide since it’s true in general for the people in some choppers, just not specifically for Williams. If people ask questions, blame the frog of war. 

Why Could This Story Be Written Now? 

We are officially out of Iraq. Ha! But the good news is that this story signals it’s safe to do these stories now since they won’t hurt the war effort.  No one has to promote the need for that war anymore, they got what they wanted, now they want ISIS money.

Of course smart people might ask, “Hey, if they made up stuff about the last war, might they be doing the same now with ISIS?” Shut up. Shut up. Shut up! I can’t believe you aren’t shutting up already!

Terrorists, the military and the media have learned about how to rev up people since the non-existent WMDs days. Of course ISIS is bad, just look at these videos! We need money and troops to deal with these bad guys!

How Do We Use This Going Forward?

The media is very good at giving powerful people another bite of the apple. Maybe Williams expects to be granted the same second bite. I’m willing to give him his bite, but I want something, a commitment to doing a better job.

What will be the fall out Williams or NBC for maintaining this multi-year lie? Of course on Fox the right kind of lie is required, it gets you promoted. But the rest of the MSM is not Fox News. Networks are going to want to distance themselves from lies. Bolster their trustworthiness.  This is our opportunity to challenge their practices, remind them of their brand promise.

We can make Williams the butt of jokes, or use his story as a lever.  Are they news people or cheerleaders?

A truth and reconciliation program for war journalists doesn’t exist, but if it did, it shouldn’t just be about telling the truth, it should be about being better in the future. ‘In the past I lied. I apologize. I will not do it again. I will use this experience to be better in the future.”

That kind of pledge is what we need.

If Williams story was accurate in the beginning, would it have changed the support for the war narrative?  Maybe not, but it tells us something that they chose this narrative. There is a pro-war-I’m-a-tough-guy-take-’em-all-out-no matter-what-the-cost, bias there.  

My friends who served, write about how horrible war is and want to make sure any future war fought is worth it.

Getting swept up in a pro-war narrative doesn’t just happen. It takes a lot of people who encourage it and keep it going. We will need narrative busters for current and future wars. People who can tell the truth and help thwart a easily lead media.

Who Profits?

Finally, Williams’ lie wasn’t a mistake for the pro-war forces, it was a valuable gift, worth 100’s of millions of dollars given by NBC to military contractors (one of whom, GE, was its parent at the time). It might also have helped goose NBCs ratings and enhanced Williams’ personal reputation and net worth come contract negotiation time.

I’m glad that Travis J. Tritten’s story acknowledges the service of the people in the damaged helicopter.  But sadly I’m sure there is more than one big weapons manufacturer exec out there who can smilingly say to Williams, “Thank you for your service.”

Crossposted to Spocko’s Brain

If a Saudi prince fell in the desert would anyone hear him calling?

by digby

So what happens if the paper of record publishes two front page stories about Saudi Arabia being involved in the worst terrorist attack in history and nobody talks about it? Check your twitter feed. Nobody’s talking about this:

A still-classified section of the investigation by congressional intelligence committees into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has taken on an almost mythic quality over the past 13 years — 28 pages that examine crucial support given the hijackers and that by all accounts implicate prominent Saudis in financing terrorism.

Now new claims by Zacarias Moussaoui, a convicted former member of Al Qaeda, that he had high-level contact with officials of the Saudi government in the prelude to Sept. 11 have brought renewed attention to the inquiry’s withheld findings, which lawmakers and relatives of those killed in the attacks have tried unsuccessfully to declassify.

“I think it is the right thing to do,” said Representative Stephen F. Lynch, Democrat of Massachusetts and an author of a bipartisan resolution encouraging President Obama to declassify the section. “Let’s put it out there.”

Mr. Lynch and his allies have been joined by former Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee was a leader of the inquiry. He has called for the release of the report’s Part 4, which dealt with Saudi Arabia, since President George W. Bush ordered it classified when the rest of the report was released in December 2002.

Mr. Graham has repeatedly said it shows that Saudi Arabia was complicit in the Sept. 11 attacks. “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier,” Mr. Graham said last month as he pressed for the pages to be made public.

Relatives of those killed on Sept. 11 as well as plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against Saudi Arabia have also demanded that the pages be made public, seeing them as the vital link that they believe connects an important ally of the United States to the deadly attacks. They say the pages, Part 4 of the report, could also help in determining the source of current funding for terrorist activities.

“If we stop funding of terrorism and hold those people accountable, wouldn’t it make a dent in the financing of terrorism today?” asked William Doyle, whose son, Joseph, was killed in the World Trade Center. Mr. Doyle said that President Obama personally assured him after the death of Osama bin Laden that he would declassify that section of the report.

The story also quotes people involved in the 9/11 commission who say that while it’s clear that Saudi Arabia may have funnelled money to al Qaeda, there’s no direct evidence of state sponsorship.

But that’s why Moussaoui’s claims should be investigated. That’s exactly what he’s alleging and he gave some very specific information indicating that it’s the case. Maybe it’s complete nonsense. But it certainly would seem to be worthy of some further discussion, particularly when the NY Times is splashing the story on Page 1 two days in a row. But hey, I guess it’s old news.

By the way, here’s the sidebar that accompanied the story today:

Saudi Princes’ Deep Ties to the West
Three of the Saudi princes accused by Zacarias Moussaoui, a member of Al Qaeda, have strong diplomatic and business ties to the United States.

Prince Bandar bin Sultan was known as “the toast of Washington” who had an “aura of charming roguishness” when he served as Saudi ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005. He is a nephew of King Salman and King Abdullah, who died last month. Prince Bandar, 65, had been close to President George Bush and his son, President George W. Bush, and helped deliver Saudi support for America’s crucial Middle East initiatives during three wars and the fight against terrorism.

He was the head of Saudi intelligence from 2012 until last April, and had been the architect of Riyadh’s plan to remove President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and lobbied against an interim nuclear accord with Iran.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, 69, is another of the king’s nephews. He replaced Prince Bandar as the Saudi ambassador in Washington in 2005 and served in that post for two years. He was the head of Saudi intelligence from 1977 until Aug. 31, 2001, and managed Riyadh’s relations with Osama bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar of the Taliban.

In an interview in 2005, he said the accusation contained in a lawsuit, later dismissed, that he provided support to Al Qaeda “was kind of a slap in the face.”

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, at 59 is a grandson of Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Abdulaziz, and is chairman of the Kingdom Holding Company and the wealthiest member of the royal family. (The rapper Busta Rhymes name-checks Prince Alwaleed in the 2008 song “Arab Money.”) He owns Rotana, the Arab world’s largest entertainment company, and holds significant investments in Citigroup, TimeWarner, Twitter and Apple, among other companies. He had a large stake in News Corporation until Tuesday, when his company sold $188 million worth of its shares, according to Financial Times.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Prince Alwaleed offered Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani $10 million for the Twin Towers Fund, but Mr. Giuliani rejected it after the prince criticized American policy in the Middle East.

Who are these “voters” you speak of?

by digby

Vox is featuring a very interesting piece today by an anonymous member of congress who lays out 9 misconceptions about congress. It all quite interesting, especially the part about congress actually being quite in touch with their districts, although I have to wonder whether they spend much time there with anyone but the rich people who fund them.  Anyway, it’s well worth reading although it’s ironic that he or she writes a very cynical take on politics and then says we shouldn’t be cynical.

However, I did want to address tone little thing. After going on about how politicians spend almost all their time hobnobbing with the rich in order to get enough money to run for office there’s this:

Almost everyone in Congress loves gerrymandering.

Without crooked districts, most members of Congress probably would not have been elected. According to the Cook Political Report, only about 90 of the 435 seats in Congress are “swing” seats that can be won by either political party. In other words, 345 seats are safe Republican or Democratic seats. Both parties like it that way. So that’s what elections are like today: rather than the voters choosing us, we choose the voters. The only threat a lot of us incumbents face is in the primaries, where someone even more extreme than we are can turn out the vote among an even smaller, more self-selected group of partisans.

Yes, that’s true. But that self-selected group of partisans also have another name. They’re called “voters”. They aren’t financing the campaign so they can get a tax break. They are “voting” in “elections” for people who represent their values. The incumbent can do this too. She can also turn out “voters” in a primary. In fact, they almost always win, simply by virtue of name recognition and incumbency.

I know it’s unpleasant to have to deal with active voters who care. They tend to have ideas about politics and want their representatives to …well, represent them. They are less likely to vote for you simply because you look good on TV. But it’s an unfortunate part of life which, if you devoted even the tiniest bit of the time you spend dialing for dollars, listening to their concerns, you might find they could be among your most helpful grassroots supporters.

I wrote about the propensity of Democrats to treat their idealists and activists like shit today in Salon. I don’t know if this MOC is a Democrat or republican. But I do know that a Republican is far less likely to be rude to their own voters than are Democrats.

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A baby step for privacy?

by digby

Maybe so. This is from privacysos.org:

Bipartisan legislation introduced this week in congress by Representatives Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Ted Poe (R-TX), and Suzan DelBene (D-WA) would require police and federal law enforcement to obtain warrants before reading our emails or tracking our physical locations, barring some exemptions. The bill would reform woefully obsolete electronic communications privacy law in the United States, which was first passed in 1986—before the internet as we know it existed, and before most people had cell phones. Lofgren’s bill would even prevent law enforcement form using controversial stingrays to track cell phones unless they got approval from a judge, having showed probable cause. The legislation is a huge step forward.

Under current US federal statutes, law enforcement may be able to obtain our private communications and documents stored in the cloud with a simple subpoena. Subpoenas are simply pieces of paper prosecutors fill out and issue to corporations or individuals, demanding information. No judge approves them or in most cases even sees them. The standard for issuing subpoenas is extremely low. Prosecutors must only believe that the information they seek is relevant to an investigation—a tautology of sorts, given that prosecutors investigate things for a living.

Obviously this federal framework for electronic surveillance makes no sense in 2015. Even the Department of Justice has agreed that a warrant requirement for email surveillance in criminal investigations makes sense. Yet somehow, congress hasn’t been able to get this obvious and important reform over the finish line.

Keep in mind that this has nothing to do with the NSA PRISM. That power exists outside the normal legal structure because foreign boogeyman. This power exists for regular state and local cops as well as the FBI. And I don’t think it’s too much for them to have to show probable cause to get ahold of your emails and texts do you?

As I said, it’s not much but it’s something. There are 233 co-sponsors. And the support is bipartisan. Can’t they at least get this small thing done?

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Why does General Myers hate the troops so much?

by digby

Ayotte asks Joint’s Rear Adm. Myers if he agrees with Mattis that it would be bad for US troop morale to have to fight freed Gitmo detainee.
— Carol Rosenberg (@carolrosenberg) February 5, 2015

Ayotte thinks it would be “atrocious.” Adm. Myers has great respect for Gen. Mattis, thinks it would have no meaningful morale impact.
— Carol Rosenberg (@carolrosenberg) February 5, 2015

Duh. I really don’t think even the delicate flowers of the US Special Forces would have their feelings hurt if they found out that one of the thousands of Islamic extremists they are fighting in the world turns out to be someone that was once in American custody.

This idea is so daft it makes me crazy. These people aren’t masterminds with supernatural powers. They are just humans with a cause. There are thousands of them and they are interchangeable. The idea that there is some finite number and once we kill or capture every last one we can declare victory is ridiculous. In the case of Guantanamo it’s been demonstrated over and over again to be a recruiting tool of immense value to the terrorists. Therefore, it serves the opposite purpose of what these fatuous politicians say it serves — it makes more terrorists, not less!

I don’t know if these people still believe that the Gitmo prisoners were “the worst of the worst” but they weren’t. The ones who have been released are anything but. And if some of them go back to wherever and join the fight again, it’s no different than if some new guy joins the fight. In fact, they’re less effective — they’re at least 10 years older.

I find it awfully depressing that we’re having these discussions again. Nothing is more frustrating, not even the idiotic fights with the Tea Party. There is something very dysfunctional in the American body politic when it comes to national security and when it’s decided that we’re on a military roll  (as the massive box office of “American Sniper” and the media obsession with lurid snuff films suggests we are) it gets stupid really quickly and then takes years to climb down again.

These comments from Senator Ayotte are exhibit I.  I’m glad General Myers had the sense to correct her, but it won’t matter. I’m just surprised she didn’t ask him why he hates the troops.

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