Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Let’s Get Serious About Fighting Terrorism

by digby

Batocchio forwards this press release.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WASHINGTON, DC – Seeking to quell fears of terrorists somehow breaking out of America’s top-security prisons and wreaking havoc on the defenseless heartland, President Barack Obama moved quickly to announce an Anti-Terrorist Strike Force headed by veteran counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer and mutant superhero Wolverine. Already dubbed a “dream team,” their appointment is seen by experts as a crucial step in reducing the mounting incidents of national conservatives and congressional Democrats crapping their pants.

“I believe a fictional threat is best met with decisive fictional force,” explained President Obama. “Jack Bauer and Wolverine are among the very best we have when in comes to combating fantasy foes.” Mr. Bauer said, “We’re quite certain that our prisons are secure. Osama bin Laden and his agents wouldn’t dare attempt a break-out, and would fail miserably if they tried. But I love this country. And should Lex Luthor, Magneto or the Loch Ness Monster attack, we’ll be there to stop them.”

The move has already earned widespread praise, and veteran columnist David Broder hailed the bipartisan nature of the team. But not all were convinced. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) scoffed, “I thought the president was a Spiderman guy. And what a surprise that a Canadian would use knives on his hands versus a good ol’ fashioned American Uzi.”

Mr. Wolverine, who also goes by Logan, responded, “What’s wrong with Canada? I fought alongside Captain America in World War II, bub. I’m happy to help out.”

Some critics have expressed concerns as to whether Mr. Bauer is the best choice to counter the potential threat of a super-villain such as Magneto, a dinosaur stampede or an alien invasion. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs responded that while Bauer lacks conventional super-powers, he can withstand extreme amounts of pain, has near infallible judgment, can teleport across Los Angeles and Washington D.C. at will, and can go 24 hours without sleep or relieving his bladder.

Should the task of protecting the country prove too difficult for the super-agent and super-hero on their own, Crime-Fightin’ Jesus has offered to lend a hand “in a pinch,” although he says he would rather spend his time helping the poor “if at all possible.” Republicans insist that a law-enforcement approach to terrorism is ineffective.

The Kimberly-Clark Corporation, manufacturers of Depends adult diapers, has already come out strongly against the announcement of the Bauer-Wolverine dream team, claiming that their increased sales are helping spur the nation’s economic recovery. Republican Newt Gingrich also condemned the president’s actions. “President Obama seems to think that crapping one’s pants is a bad thing somehow,” said the former Speaker of the House, “but crapping one’s pants is what this country was founded on. The Reagan Revolution wouldn’t have happened without fear of evil Soviets and welfare queens. And say what you will about President Bush, he kept this country crapping its pants for seven long years after 9/11.”

The White House declined to comment.

Finally, a sensible solution to a serious problem. Now let’s move on and talk about how to repay the national debt by 2010.

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And I’m A Member Of British Royal Family

by digby

This just cracks me up:

In October, Bill O’Reilly renewed his contract with Fox News, winning a multi-year deal paying him roughly $10 million per year — placing him well above the top 0.1 percent of income earners. O’Reilly also reportedly charges $50,000 per speaking engagement. Yesterday on his show, O’Reilly said he supports more fuel efficient cars because he has a “middle-class…sensibility”:

INGRAHAM: And what this is, whether you like the green initiatives or not, ultimately, will end up being a continued war on the prosperity of the middle class of America. That’s what this is. It’s part of the remaking of the middle class of America – O’REILLY: Why, why, why? Look, I consider myself a middle-class guy. Even though I make a lot of money, my sensibility is there. INGRAHAM: Yeah.

Watch it: O’Reilly’s middle class “sensibility” curiously favors the wealthy. Last July, he complained that if President Bush’s tax cuts “on those making $250,000 or more” are repealed, “me and other rich folks” would have to finance “folks who dropped out of school, who are too lazy to hold a job, who smoke reefers 24/7.” This isn’t surprising, of course. A Wonk Room analysis found that O’Reilly saves over $400,000 per year under Bush’s tax code. In March, speaking to anti-tax crusader Glenn Beck, O’Reilly accused “30 percent” of the public of being “jealous” of the rich, saying they want to “take from the rich and give to the poor.”

Being middle class isn’t a “sensibility” even though wealthy celebrities like O’Reilly love to think of themselves as regular guys. Just because you prefer beer to champagne, it doesn’t make you middle class. It’s about how much money you have, period.

The Census Bureau shows the middle 20% of the country earning between $40,000 and $95,000 annually and The Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a non-partisan and non-profit organization, reports that the middle class has conventionally come to mean families with incomes between $25,000 and $100,000 each year.

Bill O’Reilly hasn’t been middle class in decades and his interests simply don’t intersect with middle class interests. But he and other wealthy, know-it-all, angry white male celebrity blowhards have managed to convincde an awful lot of people that what’s good for Bill O’Reilly is good for them. It’s a beautiful scam which sadly, is not being exposed for the con it really is, even now.
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Looking In The Rearview Mirror

by digby

I have much the same reaction to Obama’s speech this morning as Greenwald and dday. Actions, not words are what matter in this case. Unfortunately, the last administration lied so constantly and so blatantly in the name of national security that the new president has to make a much stronger case and demonstrate his commitments much more visibly before anyone will believe America has changed its policy. Just saying you believe in the constitution and that America should live up to its values isn’t really good enough. After all, Bush used to say the same thing.

But in case you are wondering what the congressional Democrats specifically have in mind about Guantanamo, here’s a little clue:

Andrea Mitchell: The president acknowledges that the real difficulty is what to do with those prisoners who you are not able to bring to trial and they are still a danger to the United States. And he talked about keeping them in prolonged, what he called prolonged detention, while working that out with judicial authorities and the congress, presumably legislation. Is that doable?

Dianne Feinstein: Yes. The laws of war very clearly say that you can keep a combatant in detention for the length of the conflict. Now this is a bit of an unusual war in that sense, but it is, in fact, a war and it is going to go on.

Therefore, if somebody is judged to be an unlawful combatant, and they remain a threat to our national security, what needs to be evolved is a process whereby their detention is periodically reviewed, either by a court, which I would prefer, or by a military panel and a determination made as to whether the threat still continues.

Now this would happen, I would think, annually, in a lengthy detention, but there is no question in my mind that somebody who is classified as an unlawful combatant can, in fact, be kept in detention until the end of this conflict, which means terrorism, against the United States, against her allies, and in the world abates.

So, basically, we are right back where we started if Feinstein speaks in any way for the administration and the Democratic Party. We are still in a “war” against a method of violence, which means there is no possible end and which means that the government can capture and imprison anyone they determine to be “the enemy” forever. The only thing that will change is where the prisoners are held and few little procedural tweaks to make it less capricious. (It’s nice that some sort of official committee will meet once in a while to decide if the war is over or if the prisoner is finally too old to still be a “danger to Americans.”)

There seems to be some misunderstanding about Guantanamo. Somehow people have gotten it into their heads is that it is nothing more than a symbol, which can be dealt with simply by closing the prison. That’s just not true. Guantanamo is a symbol, true, but it’s a symbol of a lawless, unconstitutional detention and interrogation system. Changing the venue doesn’t solve the problem.

I know it’s a mess, but the fact is that this isn’t really that difficult, except in the usual beltway kabuki political sense. There are literally tens of thousands of potential terrorists all over the world who could theoretically harm America. We cannot protect ourselves from that possibility by keeping the handful we have in custody locked up forever, whether in Guantanamo or some Super Max prison in the US. It’s patently absurd to obsess over these guys like it makes us even the slightest bit safer to have them under indefinite lock and key so they “can’t kill Americans.” The mere fact that we are doing this makes us less safe because the complete lack of faith we show in our constitution and our justice systems is what fuels the idea that this country is weak and easily terrified. There is no such thing as a terrorist suspect who is too dangerous to be set free. They are a dime a dozen, they are all over the world and for every one we lock up there will be three to take his place. There is not some finite number of terrorists we can kill or capture and then the “war” will be over and the babies will always be safe. This whole concept is nonsensical.

The real terrorists, I’m afraid, are the self-serving hawks who promise to explode a political dirty bomb in the halls of the capitol every time someone tries to be sensible about American foreign policy and national security. They are still running things. They have always run things. And the sorry fact is that their dominance is a decades long model of bipartisan comity.

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Rhetoric and Reality

by dday

Glennzilla did a nice job of summarizing this general dynamic today, but I wanted to make one specific point.

In his speech today, the President suggested that existing structures could deal with investigations and even proseuctions of those who violated law during the Bush Administration’s torture regime. He means Congressional inquiries rather than an independent commission, and Justice Department prosecutions rather than through an indepedent or special counsel.

I know that these debates lead directly to a call for a fuller accounting, perhaps through an Independent Commission.

I have opposed the creation of such a Commission because I believe that our existing democratic institutions are strong enough to deliver accountability. The Congress can review abuses of our values, and there are ongoing inquiries by the Congress into matters like enhanced interrogation techniques. The Department of Justice and our courts can work through and punish any violations of our laws.

A fine collection of words. But in his meeting with civil liberties and human rights groups yesterday, Obama suggested that he – not the Attorney General – would not allow such prosecutions to take place.

On at least one issue, though, Obama seems to have made up his mind. Isikoff reports that Obama announced his opposition to torture prosecutions–an unsurprising admission, perhaps, but one that must have disappointed many in attendance. Previously he had said that the question of investigation and prosecuting Bush administration officials was one for Holder to answer. But with Holder sitting right beside him, there’s no doubt he’s feeling pressure to, as they say, look forward, not backward.

So in public, the President gave a pretty speech about upholding the rule of law, but inside the White House, he vows not to uphold it, to do precisely the opposite of what he claims to believe makes us “who we are as a people.” In fact, it does violence to the rule of law for the President to even decide who does and does not get prosecuted, as that is nowhere near within his jurisdiction. And as each new revelation about criminal activity committed at the highest levels comes out, the hollowness of Obama’s rhetoric becomes more and more clear:

One source with knowledge of Zubaydah’s interrogations agreed to describe the legal guidance process, on the condition of anonymity.

The source says nearly every day, (a contractor named James) Mitchell would sit at his computer and write a top-secret cable to the CIA’s counterterrorism center. Each day, Mitchell would request permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques on Zubaydah. The source says the CIA would then forward the request to the White House, where White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would sign off on the technique. That would provide the administration’s legal blessing for Mitchell to increase the pressure on Zubaydah in the next interrogation.

A new document is consistent with the source’s account.

The CIA sent the ACLU a spreadsheet late Tuesday as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. The log shows the number of top-secret cables that went from Zubaydah’s black site prison to CIA headquarters each day. Through the spring and summer of 2002, the log shows, someone sent headquarters several cables a day.

“At the very least, it’s clear that CIA headquarters was choreographing what was going on at the black site,” says Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU lawyer who sued to get the document. “But there’s still this question about the relationship between CIA headquarters and the White House and the Justice Department and the question of which senior officials were driving this process.”

This happened BEFORE the Office of Legal Counsel authorized torture through the Bybee/Yoo memos, and at a time when Gonzales was not in the Justice Department or involved in the workings of the CIA or any other federal agency. He was the President’s lawyer and speaking, presumably, for the President. Directly from the White House. Directing and approving torture without legal opinions. I agree with the groups seeking disbarment of the lawyers involved with twisting the law to justify the Bush torture program, and apparently, the first lawyer involved in doing this was Alberto Gonzales.

But the President of the United States would rather issue a blanket directive that actions like this – the lawyer to the President sitting down and cabling approval of torture tactics against a prisoner on a daily basis – should face no accountability whatsoever. Making the rhetorical flourish in the National Archives today very difficult to take seriously.

UPDATE: David Waldman was at the meeting, and he says on the point of investigations and prosecutions, Isikoff’s reporting is wrong. Duly noted.

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Fighting For Principles

by digby

It seems as if the administration is getting buffeted from all sides these days and I’m sure the president wonders if he has any friends at all sometimes. But the fact is that politics works as much through pressure and working the levers of power as it does with friends and allies working together. “Trust” is not a particularly useful word and neither is “cynicism.” You have to keep up the pressure for change or it will not happen.

It’s been a rough year for the LGBT community with Proposition 8 in California, while at the same time there have been some great victories in the Northeast. Just this week, it was reported that the Obama administration has not yet ordered the promised Pentagon review of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The battle for full civil rights is raging all around the country and with every step forward there seems to be a step back.

In order to wage that fight more effectively, some people have come together and decided that the time is now to lay down a set of principles. And they are asking you to sign on:

On May 15-17, 2009 in Dallas, Texas twenty-four thinkers, activists, and donors gathered to discuss the immediate need for full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender people in the United States. Collectively we prepared The Dallas Principles.

To join the growing chorus of Americans speaking in unison that now is the time to provide full civil rights to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens, CLICK HERE.

The following eight guiding principles underlie our call to action.
In order to achieve full civil rights now, we avow:
1.Full civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals must be enacted now. Delay and excuses are no longer acceptable.
2.We will not leave any part of our community behind.
3.Separate is never equal.
4.Religious beliefs are not a basis upon which to affirm or deny civil rights.
5.The establishment and guardianship of full civil rights is a non-partisan issue.
6.Individual involvement and grassroots action are paramount to success and must be encouraged.
7.Success is measured by the civil rights we all achieve, not by words, access or money raised.
8.Those who seek our support are expected to commit to these principles.

To join the growing chorus of Americans speaking in unison that now is the time to provide full civil rights to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens, CLICK HERE.

Keep the pressure on. This is an issue that affects every single person in this country, no matter what your sexual orientation or attitudes about marriage and the military. The simple fact is that until all Americans are are treated equally, none of us are.

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High Thresholds

by digby

They really are trying to kill me. Here’s Spencer Ackerman:

Let’s unpack a claim about the Guantanamo detainees, as summarized by Marc Ambinder:

It had been the hope of administration legal advisers that a majority of the 240 [Guantanamo detainees] — perhaps a large majority — would be tried in federal courts. Then they discovered that the evidentiary thresholds for doing so were too high given the quality of information the Bush government had collected about the detainees, and they subsequently concluded that Article III trials wouldn’t be as swift as an option that they wanted to reserve for only a couple dozen high-value detainees: the military commissions.

To say that the “evidentiary thresholds” for trying the detainees in civilian court is “too high” is another way of saying there isn’t sufficient evidence on the face of it for the constant invocation that the detainees are terrorists. If it can be proven that a detainee has given material support to terrorists or contributed to an illegal act, he ought to be convicted. If it can’t, then a detainee ought to be freed. What would happen in that case? Someone who isn’t a terrorist would be free. The detainees, according to the Supreme Court’s Boumediene decision last year, have the right to habeas corpus, full stop. There’s no putting that bit of juridical toothpaste back in the tube. As a result, they have to be provided with some sort of trial. Everything else is denying reality. The military commissions represent a method of getting convictions rather than a method of getting justice. Just saying someone is a terrorist over and over again doesn’t make it the case.

There is no excuse for not knowing that the “evidentiary threshold” might be a little bit too high. We’ve known for years that they didn’t have real evidence against many of these guys and what they later obtained in the form of “confessions” had been obtained through torture. Common sense says that they wouldn’t have felt the need to create this extra-legal system if they could have convicted them in normal civilian or military courts.
And, I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe this anyway. The problem here is political, not procedural, and the administration and the Democrats just don’t want to expend any political capital because they don’t care enough about this to risk giving the Republicans something to hang onto.
The easiest thing to do at this point would be to give these prisoners military courts martials and if the Republicans object, they should immediately develop a full blown case of the vapors, screeching at the top of their lungs that the GOP has no respect for the military and is devaluing our troops. If these courts are good enough for our boys, they ought to be good enough for a bunch of terrorist suspects. But that won’t happen. It would be inappropriate, as Ben Nelson said today.
Update: Well, at least there’s this:

Under heavy criticism for a series of decisions on national security that resembled, for some, those of the Bush years, President Barack Obama hosted a lengthy meeting on Wednesday with the leaders of several key human rights and civil liberties groups. Addressed were the topics that promise to be front and center during the President’s major foreign policy speech scheduled for Thursday. According to an attendee, Obama expressed frustration with Congress’ decision to remove funding for the closure of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. The president declared that his hands were tied in some ways regarding the use of reformed military tribunals, though he pledged to try as many detainees as possible in Article III federal courts. […]
There was much to probe. According to Massimino, Obama had “two baskets of issues he wanted to talk about: one was Guantanamo and all of the things pertaining to closing it. And the other was transparency.” On Gitmo, Massimino said, the President “emphasized that he was in this for the long game. He said he realized that you can’t change people’s misperceptions overnight, that they have had eight long years of a steady dose of fear and a lack of leadership and that is not something that you wave a magic wand and make it go away.”

If it weren’t for the fact that every single voter voted for a man who said they would close Guantanamo in the last election, I might buy this. And the “long game” is actually long enough already for those who’ve been held for years without being able to confront their accusers and with no idea if they would ever be free.

While acknowledging that she did not have verbatim quotes from the president, Massimino nevertheless relayed some of the remarks he made on other key foreign policy topics. On the administration’s decision to reverse course and oppose the release of photos depicting abuse of terrorist suspects, she said that Obama brought it up without being prompted. “He raised it,” she said. “We didn’t have to ask.”

On his decision to maintain and improve the use of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects, Obama, she said, “seemed to imply that some of the circumstances of capture of some of the people of Guantanomo would lend themselves to trial in a military commission.” He reiterated, she added, that “despite the announcement of military commissions on Friday, his strong preference was that we use Article III courts…” […]
Asked whether the president had pacified some of the concerns she brought to the White House on Wednesday, Massimino said that she was pleased with the opportunity for engagement. Beyond that, she still registered concerns. “I think that many of us were disappointed by the announcement about the military commissions and wondered what the reasoning was behind that. And to be honest, I am still wondering having been in this meeting today. I don’t think that this fits the overall framework that the president had articulated about using our values to reinforce a counter terrorism strategy against al Qaeda.”

And expanding the state secrets argument and withholding FOIA documents (or issuing signing statements which claim executive privilege over bailout oversight) doesn’t fit into the transparency framework either.
It’s a good thing that Obama wants to keep an open dialog with the human rights community but it’s become quite clear to me that Democrats as a whole — and I believe with his 65% approval rated permission — have concluded once again that in order to appear to be tough on national security they need to capitulate to the Republicans by punching the hippies — the only people who seem to give a damn about the constitution, civil liberties and human rights. It’s pavlovian.

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Crazy Conservatives Part Deux

by digby

Ed Kilgore fills us in on the result of that ground breaking meeting today:

In a step that will be interpreted as a triumph for what passes as Republican “moderation” these days, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution (at a special session called for this purpose) today that accuses the President and the Democratic Party of “pushing our country towards socialism,” but does not specifically demand that Democrats begin calling themselves the “Democrat Socialist Party,” which was how it was originally worded.

Since all the “whereas” clauses in the resolution seem to have been left intact, it doesn’t appear that Republicans have changed their minds about calling Democrats “socialists.” They’ve just abandoned the sophomoric idea of demanding a party name change, complete with cropping “Democratic” to “Democrat,” an odd if ancient GOP ritual.

Feel that Big GOP Tent expand.

Man, if it isn’t Gitmo terrorists coming to our malls and bake sales to kill us where we stand, it’s the Democrat Socialist Nazis who are destroying the very fabric of America. Best gather our guns, jump into our Escalades and take to the hills. (For the week-end anyway.)

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The Rare Reverse Kabuki

by dday

I don’t know who fed the media this point, or maybe they just couldn’t ignore the wealth of hypocrisy surrounding the right-wing hissy fit over Nancy Pelosi, but they have started to inexplicably push back. It started last week when Marcy Wheeler noted that Pete Hoekstra, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, accused the CIA of providing insufficient briefings and even lying to Congress, regarding a separate investigation. In the interim, a host of elements of the CIA’s story started to fall apart – their briefing record document included people who weren’t in the meetings, people who lacked the security clearance to attend, and even stated Porter Goss was briefed in 2005 when he was the Director of the CIA at the time. The invaluable ThinkProgress dug up a copy of the letter Hoekstra sent to the CIA, and added this:

Similarly, in 2007, Hoekstra described a closed-door briefing by representatives from the intelligence community (including CIA) on the National Intelligence Estimate of Iran’s nuclear capability, saying that the members “didn’t find [the briefers] forthcoming.” More recently, in November 2008, Hoekstra concluded that the CIA “may have been lying or concealing part of the truth” in testimony to Congress regarding a 2001 incident in which the CIA mistakenly killed an American citizen in Peru. “We cannot have an intelligence community that covers up what it does and then lies to Congress,” Hoekstra said of the incident.

Maybe this was simply the easiest way for journalists to understand the emptiness of the hissy fit – Hoekstra said “lied,” too – but for some reason they’re off and running with this today. Wolf Blitzer confronted John Boehner with this and he had to concede the point. Newt Gingrich tried to play this off when called on it by Diane Sawyer, of all people, but it didn’t work ut too well for him.

(not that anyone should give a crap what Newt Gingrich thinks.)

And here comes none other than Arlen Specter, calling ’em how he sees ’em with respect to the CIA:

Sen. Arlen Specter took the opportunity Wednesday to defend House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has come under fire in recent weeks over a controversy surrounding when she was told of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques being used by the CIA.

“The CIA has a very bad record when it comes to — I was about to say ‘candid’; that’s too mild — to honesty,” Specter, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a lunch address to the American Law Institute. He cited misleading information about the agency’s involvement in mining harbors in Nicaragua and the Iran-Contra affair.

I have no idea why the worm turned today, but this controversy is basically over. The CIA’s theory is full of holes, and the Pelosi spat has turned into he said/she said, with the media willing to explore Republican hypocrisy on the issue.

Of course, defusing this time bomb has an added benefit – it ends any rising calls for investigations, perhaps starting with what Pelosi knew but encompassing the entire breadth of the torture regime from top to bottom. The Village certainly wants no part of that. So they had to play rough with Republicans for a couple days. It’s almost a Kabuki dance in reverse – the media pretends to delve deep and fact-check precisely to pre-empt anyone else getting to actually delve deep and fact-check.

Pretty sharp. Meanwhile the whole “we tortured detainees to justify the war in Iraq” storyline has faded off into the distance as well. Maybe Jonathan Landay will drop yet another McClatchy bombshell soon.

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Symbolism

by digby

Here’s the state of the Guantanamo debate from both the Democrats, the Republicans and the villagers on Hardball this afternoon It’s not reassuring:

Saxby Chambliss: We know that the ones that are left in Guantanamo are the meanest, nastiest killers in the world. They getup every day thinking of ways that they can kill and harm Americans. And those are the individuals that we just can’t afford to have transferred to this country and certainly we can’t afford to put them into a position to be released into US society.

Matthews: Do you think our maximum security prisons are not adequate to hold them? We’ve got some, you know, a lot of killers in our prisons. We’ve got murderers, people who murdered again and again in our prisons, really horrible people in those prisons in our country. Senator, Chambliss, you’re saying they’re not good enough to hold these terorists, not tough enough to hold them?

Chambliss: No, what I’m saying is that once you put ’em on Americal soil, then all of a sudden they become eligible for a lot of rights that American criminal have and these are combatant detainees. These are not ordinary bank robbers or the nasty folks who they might be asociated with at these prisons.

These are folks that either have killed or tried to kill Americans. And we ned to make sure that they don’t have the rights given to those criminals that are on American soil, such as the right of habeas corpus, and a certain number of them will probably be successful in a habeas corpus action and could be released in America. And we don’t need to give the Americans the exposure of that nature.

Matthews: is this really a case of NIMBY?

Ben Nelson: It’s certainly not in my case. I think it’s inappropriate to bring those prisoners .. er combatants to America to house them to incarcerate them. It’s just inappropriate. It’s a matter of politics, it’s a matter of policy, and even if you idn’t run the risk of habeas corpus and some of the other rights that they might be able to assert on American soil, it’s inappropriate. This is not the place for them. We need to work with other countries to make sure that they don’t release them. That they keep them incarcerated. After all, they’re their residents, they’re their citizens and after all, they have an obligation here as well. It’s not all on our shoulders in my opinion.

Matthews: The French sent Napoleon to St Helena. Is there another place besides Gitmo? I understand Senator Chambliss, the symbolism. Obviously the candidate Barack Obama didn’t like the symbolism of Gitmo, but are we gonna have to face the fact that these guys are terrorists, they’re going to have to be somewhere, it might as well be Gitmo.

Chambliss: Well, I understand what he’s talking about from a symbolism standpoint and I’m not one who thinks we ought to keep Gitmo open for ever and ever and ever. But you’ve got to have a plan in place before you make a major decision such as closing Gitmo. It may take us three, four, five, ten years. I don’t know what it will take us before we can d eal with each of these prisoners individually. That’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for a way to keep those prisoners housed and keep them off of American soil until some definitive plan is in place

Chris then noted the Robert Mueller said the terrorists could run the jihad from prison and Chambliss agreed that our prisons could easily become hotbed of terrorist activities because they are a breeding ground for recidivism. They are super smart, clever people who are experts at getting their message out.

Chris then asked Ben Nelson why we are so “dainty” about this and why don’t just execute these dangerous criminals since they are evil and will always be evil. Nelson said we should send them back to their countries under the understanding they will never be released or at least will be rehabilitated as the Saudi Arabians do even though it doesn’t really work.

Never once, during the entire incoherent, intellectual compost pile of a discussion did anyone mention the fact that a bunch of these “terrorists” are not guilty of anything. But I guess that’s not important. If some grunt picked them up seven years ago somewhere in the world then they are guilty of being in the wrong place at the right time, ‘n that’s good enough for us.

I just have to laugh at the sight of Republicans defending our good clean All American killers against some SuperVillain Afghan farmer who “killed Americans or tried to kill Americans.” I’m sure the American killers will happily vote Republican with that kind of endorsement (if they are ever let loose and Americans are “exposed” to them. )

This isn’t even a debate. It’s a pageant. A sick, stupid pageant

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Those Crazy Conservatives

by digby

… are at it again:

Yesterday Michael Steele said:

We are going to take this president on with class. We are going to take this president on with dignity. This will be a very sharp and marked contrast to the shabby and classless way that the Democrats and the far left spoke of President Bush.

Today:

Nearly 2,600 people voted in our ConservativeHQ.com Web site poll conducted from May 12th through May 19th. Ninety-one percent of self-identified conservatives said Obama was either a “socialist,” “Marxist,” “communist,” or “fascist,” proving Obama is no garden variety liberal.

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