The Fate of the Torture Architects

Remove all ads!

I didn't feel that way at all Ragusa. I believe it is not just the right that are in that camp. I think more of the "pro-options" group are from the right rather than left, but not all.

 

You don't have to search for a link - you're right. What I'm saying is that the rules for the executive branch and the lawyers who provide them advice are evidently different than that rules that apply to all other attornies and citizens of the nation.

 

I may regret resurrecting this thread, but I couldn't help it when I saw this.

John Yoo speaks

 

What a crock. CYA as usual.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/27300

 

John Yoo, just like Cheney, has adopted the aggressive defence approach. Go in your face and be unrepentant and the rubes and casual observers may think that someone so self-righteous cannot possibly have committed crimes like torture, else he would hide in shame. Well, it's just that Yoo nor Cheney know no shame. As if his memos weren't enough, the guy gets ever more outrageous the more he speaks.

Contrast that to Bybee who wisely just keeps his mouth shut.

Of course Yoo would celebrate Margolis memo as a clean bill of health, which it isn't. Pretending is everything in this game. They dared the Obama administration to prosecute, and the Obama crew chickened out, and now Yoo and Cheney (with some justification) feel they have the upper hand and get cocky. It's a game of chicken over war crimes and torture and Yoo and Cheney have won this round. That said, this is far from over.

 

This is the lesson that Democrats have never learned from Republicans: Even when they screw up and do something dreadful, Repubilans are proud of it, and pretend that it was a great accoplishment, which largely gets them a pat on the back from the mainstream media. It is all about positive, good-feely moments, even if the results are dreadful, like torture -- Keep waving the flag, and talk about "the men and women on the front lines, keeping America free, at all costs," and you win lots of friends.

The Democrats will always be Democrats and try to see which way the political wind will blow in their favor, and appear to be what they are: Flip-floppers, who lack courage and poltical will, even when they know they should do the right thing. Obama may be the worst in this regard, in that he will cut a deal and look the other way because of the politics of any issue, torture, and even health care, demonstrate this. In the end, he will more than likely be a one term president (as Cheney arrogantly points out), and not because of Republicans, but because the very people who put him there will see him as useless on the issues that matter to them.

 

Wow, I wish I could make that my signature.

 

Snook - There's plenty out there. I voted for Obama and was proud to do so. His promises:

1. He said he would NOT tax health care benefits. He railed on McCain for even suggesting that as part of his plan. We know how that turned out.
2. He said the government would not mandate that people have to buy insurance. Now, that's the damn centerpiece of his health care bill.
3. He said he would end torture and reestablish the Rule of Law. Maybe someone should explain to Obama what that means.
4. He said he would reform Wall Street and craft consumer protections. Still waiting for that more than a year later.
5. He said that business as usual in Washington was over, and that "change" had come. Hello? Is anybody out there?

The media says: "Obama just met political reality." Really? He had a clear mandate from the people to do these things. People knew what they were voting for when they voted (or THOUGHT they knew). If "political reality" is not a mandate from the people, then I'm not sure what is.

 

Chandos, maybe he was a little naive or too trusting. He believed that the Republicans would see things his way if only he had a chance to explain things to them. Perhaps arrogance would be a good descriptor, but I don't think that when I see Obama. IMHO he didn't so much not follow through on his promises as he failed to accomplish them.

 

I call BS on that. Until Scott Brown was elected to the Senate the Dems had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and solid control of the House. They could have and probably still can pass anything they want to.

 

Obama didn't meet 'political reality', he met 'not needing to campaign any more, since he's already elected'.

 

I'm not sure what to think about it. Sometimes I feel like I landed on some other planet when I hear all these guys talk, that includes Republicans as well. It really is time for a third party and the wind seems to be blowing in that direction. There is almost a sense of desperation in the American public at the moment and just about anything looks better than what we have now. Is that scary, or what?

That's right. But they are too worried about their own political hides to show any backbone.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/35695346#35695346

Edit: I did want to add one more thing: One of the first things Obama did was fire Howard Dean from the leadership postition. Howard is one of the few Democrats who had ever shown any real courage, and in fact, devised the strategy that got Obama elected. Altough it seemed a puzzle at the time, it should have been a big tip-off of things to come.

 

The Dems, yes, Obama, no. Obama does not call all the shots in the Democratic Party. I would go so far as to say that he could have tabled all sorts of stuff, but the Democrats might not have passed it, and then they would have looked really stupid to the voters.

 

LKD - I would ask you to watch the link I posted and see how it fits into the larger picture of what is going on in health care, atm.

What I would like to see, is my colleague, Death Rabbit, (and Aldeth as well) weigh-in on this, since he was just as excited as I was about the possibilities regarding the Obama election the previous November (hint, hint, nudge, nudge).

 

Chandos, I'm actually with LKD on this, too. If the democrats had anything approaching the party discipline of the republicans, this legislation would have been passed before the first deadline. They do not. If you exclude Joe Lieberman and the rest of the conservative democrats from their caucus, the Senate democrats barely hold a majority -- this was true even before the election of Scott Brown. Because of this, conservative democrats currently wield undue influence on the legislative process. Unfortunately for the democratic caucus, these Conservative democrats have proven themselves all too willing to use this new-found influence to their advantage, even at the cost of their own party's survival. This is political reality.

 

Well, I was curious as to what you thought as well, Drew. And I appreciate you trying to talk me down from the roof on this, but, why is it that Obama is willing to compromise everything he stood for on health care just to save the hides of those that, I (and you), mentioned? It seems to me that his first loyalty is to the American people, those who voted for him, and what they expected from him. I mean, isn't this what we accused GWB of? The kind of political and party cronism that disregarded good policy, over partisan politics?

 

I'll take this issue by issue, if you don't mind.

Obama relented on the public option because, as we all saw, the votes for it simply did not exist within his own caucus. Thanks to Lieberman, the caucus couldn't even pass a minor, budget-neutral expansion of medicare.

Obama relented on the mandate because, quite frankly, he was wrong about it not being necessary. We cannot require insurance companies to remove their pre-existing condition clauses without a mandate. Putting in such a requirement without the mandate would be like requiring life insurance companies to write policies for the terminally ill.

Obama did end torture, but congress has been stopping him from bringing the GITMO detainees into the United States. This one isn't his fault, either.

Regarding other unfulfilled promises, Obama has spent all his political capital on health care. While congress is capable of doing many things at once, it isn't so good at doing a bunch of big things at the same time, and the last thing Obama needs right now is another contentious debate. He needs more time to get to everything on his docket. I'll withhold my judgment until he gets this particular albatross off his back and I think that you should do the same.

 

This is true. It should be pointed out that the 59 democrats/democrat-leaning independenets currently in the Senate are more than the number of Republicans Bush had in the Senate at any point in his eight years in office. So I don't buy that losing the filibuster proof majority (which they never really had anyway with Joe Lieberman counting as one of those 60) is what is costing them the ability to get anything done.

How did the Republicans do it when they were in office? Through reconciliation. (Which is why I find it so hypocritical that the Republicans are now calling foul on the use of that procedure.) The purpose of reconciliation is when a compromise cannot be reached. Both parties have made use of it in the past, even on major spending bills, of which HCR certainly would qualify. I did a bit of research and the Republicans used reconciliation nine times while Bush was in office to get stuff passed. (And that's nine times on major bills - on minor bills reconciliation is used frequently by both parties.) On three of those times, they only got 50 votes, and Cheney had to cast the tie-breaker.

That's why I think HCR is going to get done - as flawed as the current bill is. The House will make a few cosmetic changes to the Senate bill, will pass it, and then the changes will clear the Senate through reconciliation. They are not getting another bite at this apple. It is easier to make changes to something that already exists, than to start from scratch and try again. History has shown that once something is given to the people, it is nearly impossible to take it away - see Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, etc. However, we have seen changes to how all those programs operate over the years. You do what you can now, and reform it when (not if) you need to in the future.

The major beef I have with HCR is Obama's relative inaction on this issue. I think they could have done so much more. I would have framed it this way - 45,000 people every year die because they don't have health care insurance. Most people who have health care insurance get it through their employer. Lots of people are losing their jobs, and their health insurance along with it. Lose you job, and next year you could be one of those 45,000 people. If Republicans have taught us nothing else, the politics of fear are very effective.

Moving onto the bigger picture of how I feel about Obama and what has happened since he has been office, I do agree that the change we have seen up to this point has been underwhelming. And I do think that part of it was arrogance. I really do think that Obama was naive enough to believe that he really could talk some Republicans into seeing things his way - after all, it worked so well during the campaign. So yes, I do think the progressives can be a little ticked off by what has been done up to this point.

About the only thing I would disagree with Chandos about is taxes on health care benefits. I don't pay any (in fact, the premiums I pay for health insurance are tax free, just like payments into my 401k plan) and I do not spend enough on health care for them to be taxed under the proposed plan.

However, there are a few more items I would like to add to the list. What about closing down Gitmo? The credit card reform was also sorely lacking. I pay my credit card bills off every month, so I don't really care about my interest rates. But I know people who do not pay off their bills every month, and they are paying 29.99% interest annually on them. How is that fair? It is practically criminal.

 

I could be wrong but I thought they wanted to tax the actual value of the plan. So if you only pay 2000.00 but your employer pays 12,000.00, they would be taxing the total of 14,000.00. But that may not be the case.

 

I admit that I have not read any of the more recent changes to the health bill, so I can only speak for what it contained around Christmas. Any changes in the last three months or so I am unfamiliar with. At that time, the only people who would be paying taxes on it were those with the gold-plated plans. There are actually plans out there that cost in excess of $18,000 per person annually, and it was those that would be subject to the tax.

In hindsight, I also realize that it isn't really fair to compare how it works right now to how it will work when this legislation goes through. Of course I don't pay taxes on my health contributions right now - no one does. (Maryland is set up so that your health plans on paid for in pre-tax dollars. Some states don't do this, but those people can write off their health care premiums on their income tax returns.) However, if they do implement that rule that's really crappy. While your company sponsored health care plan is part of your compensation package, it certainly isn't disposable income.