The GOP Defends Torture

On a day when Sen Arlen Spector abandons a flailing GOP former VP Cheney wont shut up about his love of Torture. Who knew ole Dick Cheney was a Masochist? Or Sado-Masochist with the duress he is inflicting on the Republican Party!

Well you know what they say the party that plays well together stays together,, to the bitter end!

Cheney demands a Torture Commission
by Robert M Shum Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The Republicans finally think they’ve found an issue: They’re in favor of torture. Republican House Leader John Boehner channeled the party’s will when he spoke up for the torturers’ cause at a White House meeting with President Obama. But his voice was drowned out (metaphorically) by someone who had previously left the White House for an undisclosed location in suburban Virginia.

Dick Cheney, the avatar of the nonexistent threat of weapons of mass destruction, hastened onto the public stage to blast the President for endangering the national security. Obama’s crime? Releasing memos depicting waterboarding and other techniques borrowed from enemies like the Communist Chinese. It wasn’t Cheney’s first assault on Obama, but it captured singular attention because Cheney plainly was the Bush Administration’s driving force in this wholesale violation of national and international law.

From a Democratic perspective, the emergence of Cheney as the face of the Republican Party is a consummation devoutly to be wished. GOP strategists generally yearn to see Cheney just go away; the last thing they want is for Americans to see the former Vice-President, an antonym for public appeal, become a synonym for their party.

On the merits, Cheney doesn’t even argue half the case—whether torture is wrong in principle, wrong legally, or wrong for American foreign policy. Instead he insists that it worked to some unspecified extent. Secretary of State Clinton pungently understated the obvious when she dismissed him as not “a particularly reliable source.” In fact, last year FBI Director Robert Mueller, a Bush holdover, was asked by an interviewer whether any attacks had been foiled by what Cheney and his acolytes whitewashed as “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Mueller was “reluctant to answer,” but then conceded: “I don’t believe that has been the case.” As early as 2002, a Pentagon study warned that torture would elicit “unreliable information.”

So what can torture’s apologists claim? For a while, their prime example was a plot to crash a plane into the tallest building in downtown Los Angeles. They pointed to information supposedly coerced from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a top al Qaida operative, who we now know was waterboarded 183 times. It’s a scenario right out of the television show “24”; appropriately it’s also fictional. The plot was derailed in 2002; KSM, as government memos refer to the Sheikh, wasn’t even captured until 2003.

Cheney, seldom daunted by the inconvenient truth, is now demanding the selective declassification of two documents allegedly “proving” the effectiveness of torture—although, of course, he refuses to call it that. (Imagine hoping to be remembered in history as the “waterboarding Vice-President.”) The difficulty, as Bush State Department Counselor Philip Zelikow points out, is that the release of these documents “would only raise questions that would have to be answered with still more disclosures.”

In other words, Cheney hasn’t thought it through—perhaps no surprise from the official who propelled us into the folly of the Iraq War—but in effect he is demanding a Torture Commission to review all the documents and decisions on the dark engine he fired up. That would be the only way to make a definitive judgment on his claims.

The President has resisted the creation of such a commission, to the consternation of many of his own supporters. It’s ironic, to say the least, that Cheney has stumbled into agreement with them by insisting that “the American people [should] have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was.” But how can they do that without a through and independent inquiry?

I doubt Obama will take Cheney’s advice. The President has sought to navigate a fine line on this issue. Those who disagree with his decision to rule out the prosecution of CIA agents who engaged in torture have a point. Do we really want to validate a defense that pleads: “I was only following the memos”? At least why not prosecute the officials who authorized torture and the lawyers who rationalized it? Leave aside the reality that it would be difficult to convict them; the government would have to prove that the legal advice was intentionally and knowingly flawed (as opposed to merely adhering to the Bush norm of gross incompetence). The President’s real reason for resisting criminal cases—or a commission—is a belief that America can’t afford a wave of recrimination and bitter division about the past when we should be concentrating on the urgent business of saving our future.

Obama’s fine line also seems to me to be finely calculated. I think he recognizes that history, too, has its claims, and that the truth will out over time, as it did with Richard Nixon and Watergate. In releasing the memos, he’s sent a clear message of deterrence—that American operatives in the future can’t rely on legal camouflage to justify torture. Indeed what has been too little noted is how the FBI and the Pentagon refused to participate in the Bush-Cheney reign of torture.

The line Obama has drawn is likely to endure. There’s no guarantee, but there wouldn’t be even if the culprits found themselves in court or under inquisitorial klieg lights. And I doubt any subsequent administration would risk a repeat of this dark chapter in our history.

And that’s where Cheney will be left—to history—unless, that is, he inadvertently aids and abets the creation of a Torture Commission. That would only seal his ultimate disgrace; we might even discover, as some allege, that the real object of waterboarding was to extract false confessions endorsing Cheney’s concocted connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida.

In the meantime, as we end the First 100 Days, which have marked not just an historic success for Obama but an ideological and political dead end for the Republicans, maybe the GOP will at last disclaim their former Vice-President. They’re already dumping on George W. Bush for the bailouts and “big spending.” Isn’t the betrayal of our laws, our reputation and our core values a graver offense? But if instead the party of “No” lets itself become the party of Cheney, well, in that case they’ll just keep torturing themselves.

source The Week.com
- ROBERT M. SHRUM has been a senior adviser to the Gore 2000 presidential campaign, the campaign of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and the British Labour Party. In addition to being the chief strategist for the 2004 Kerry-Edwards campaign, Shrum has advised thirty winning U.S. Senate campaigns; eight winning campaigns for governor; mayors of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other major cities; and the Democratic Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. Shrum's writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times , The New York Times , The New Republic , Slate , and other publications. The author of No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner (Simon and Schuster), he is currently a Senior Fellow at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service.

"Old School" Republicans Are "Scared Shitless"

Good speech but in my opinion a waste of time. The GOP seems adrift and about to ground itself on those jagged rocks of irrelevancy.

The party represents only One Political Thought: Failure they embrace it!

The No Nothing, Do Nothing Party!



April 18, 2009 09:46 PM

Speaking to an affectionate crowd of Log Cabin Republicans on Saturday evening, Meghan McCain ridiculed the party her father headed this past election, declaring that "old school Republicans" were "scared shitless" of the changing landscape.

The Senator's daughter, who has quickly become something of an iconic figure in the gay conservative community since the end of the election, took repeated shots at the GOP for its antiquated mores.

"I feel too many Republicans want to cling to past successes," said McCain. "There are those who think we can win the White House and Congress back by being 'more' conservative. Worse, there are those who think we can win by changing nothing at all about what our party has become. They just want to wait for the other side to be perceived as worse than us. I think we're seeing a war brewing in the Republican Party. But it is not between us and Democrats. It is not between us and liberals. It is between the future and the past."

Later, she called out those officials in the Republican tent who insist that tactical improvements, technology and brass-knuckle politicking are the path back to relevance.

"Simply embracing technology isn't going to fix our problem," she said. "Republicans using Twitter and Facebook isn't going to miraculously make people think we're cool again. Breaking free from obsolete positions and providing real solutions that don't divide our nation further will. That's why some in our party are scared. They sense the world around them is changing and they are unable to take the risk to jump free of what's keeping our party down."

The remarks, delivered at the Log Cabin Republican's national convention in Washington D.C., drew healthy applause and the occasional high-pitched whistling. McCain, at one point, declared herself a proud member of the GOP. But her pot shots at the Republican Party and its flashier figures were not thinly veiled. Describing her public tiff with Ann Coulter as non-delicate, she went on to refer to the brash conservative talker as "overly partisan and divisive." Later in the speech she insisted that "most of our nation wants our nation to succeed" - a pretty clear dig at the now-infamous remarks of talk radio host Rush Limbaugh.

As for the GOP establishment, McCain described it as a "party that was thriving at one point on a few singular issues" but could no longer "see long-term success."

"We've seen how it has contributed to some serious problems in our nation and world," McCain said, in an apparent reference to the government under GOP control. "Let me blunt, you can't assume you're electing the right leaders to handle all the problems facing our nation when you make your choice based on one issue. More and more people are finally getting that."

Vermont Gay Marriage

Yesterday, 7 April, 2009 the Vermont House of Representatives, by one vote, overrode Gov. Jim Douglas’s veto of a bill allowing gay couples to marry. By only one vote but that is all that was needed. Vermont is the first state to allow same-sex marriage through legislative action instead of a court ruling. This I support.

In 2000, Vermont became the first state to adopt civil unions for gay couples. It is now the fourth state to allow same-sex marriage. In addition to Iowa, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Also yesterday, the District of Columbia gave initial approval to a plan to recognize same-sex marriages performed outside of the District. That could open this to a Federal case because of Congressional oversight of the District. In 1996 Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act. Bill Clinton signed that bill. As a result of that act the federal government may not recognize same-sex marriage, no social security survivors benefits etc.

Last week the Iowa Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages. That is not the job of any court. Courts are not qualified to make laws. The judiciary of that state is out of line and it needs to be corrected as California voters did to its Supreme Court.

The founding fathers concept of separation of powers is more important to my mind than government recognition of gay marriage. My representative and senator speak for me and write the laws. The judiciary makes decisions based on the Constitution and those laws. The executive branch enforces those laws. Simple. (Then there are the separate states. As a Texan, I like that too.)

In California, Proposition 8 was approved by the voters. That act amended the state’s Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. This was in response to the abuse of power by the state Supreme Court which decided that a handful of lawyers dressed like Catholic Priests could change the will of a few million fellow citizens. They were wrong and the people told them so.

Now the California GLBT ‘community’ has an even greater hurdle to climb. It will take more that a few years to correct. 26 States have existing bans on same sex marriage. Some of those are constitutional bans I guess that is one critical vote to the negative if you are thinking of a U.S. Constitutional Amendment. In other words, it will not happen any time soon.

My point here is that to make a law; more specifically to change a law for same sex marriage, it must be done right. Through the law making bodies. Stop trying to back door this through the courts or executive decree. Be up front and honest.
Gays are quite literally asking straights to help. To grant recognition as equals. If they ask right, it might happen.

Californian faggots dressed in white face and French clown suits went into a Catholic Cathedral in San Francisco and took communion from the Arch-Bishop. These faggots don’t have the courage to show their real face or name. They then walked back down the isle sticking their tongue out at old ladies and young children with the communion host still on their tongue. This was clearly to help convince Christians on which way to vote for Gay rights. It worked like a charm. Prop 8 passed. Gay marriage is unconstitutional in California. Then gay people walked around with ‘H8 and Hate’ signs to show their appreciation. That pretty much secured the law for a generation or more.

As a Roman Catholic, conservative, expert marksman, disease free, father of four sons, TEXAN, I am proud to be the partner of this blogs owner. This is my first independent post here. I hope my position is clear.
Gay rights will happen. Get the idiots out of the spotlight. Maybe carry signs saying “I Love too!”, “I love You!”, stuff like that, no hate. It will happen faster. This ’in your face’ drag queen style crap will send exactly the message California voters sent back in the State Constitution. “NO.”

I applaud the Vermont House of representatives for it’s override of the governors veto. My partner, DeWayne and I look forward to this happening in more states.

Albert in Texas