Senator Graham,

Is torture EVER an American Principle?

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Comment by Exley

And how will you know when they’re kaput? I predict AQI will be declared defeated just before Bush leaves office. That way (he thinks) historians will judge him less harshly. We all know AQI is just a convienient tool for republican fundraising, anyway.

To then mistreat prisoners, while we have “boots in harms way”, absolutely leaves me at a loss. The English language doesn’t have enough expressions of contempt to describe such things. “EVIL” is the only word that comes close.

I actually agree with pretty much everything you said. See posting 141.

Actually, as I have said numerous times, while I admit I initially favored the invasion of Iraq, now agree with you.

I wish we had never gone in and had kept our focus on Afghanistan. It was a mistake to invade Iraq. It does depress me when I remember how united the nation (and the world) was in the aftermath of 9/11 and how that is now pretty much all gone. But the thing is my wishes are irrelevant. The fact is we are there now and now Al Qaeda is there as well. So, we need to stay in Iraq until at least AQI is defeated. We can’t let Iraq become the new Afghanistan. That is the reason I oppose any type of serious, sustained military action against Iran.

Comment by Exley — October 31, 2007 @ 4:58 pm

Then you are truly an antiAmerican moron. Truly. That is single stupidest thing ever posted on this site. And your excuses for their theft of our rights and shredding of the Constitution make you an enemy of the United States, as they are.

Comment by Exley — October 31, 2007 @ 5:32 pm

There WAS huge support for the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and there can/could be more support. BUT the occupation of Iraq has taken the initial success in Afghanistan and thrown it away. Afghanistan is not the success that it was. The Bush admin has not provided Afghanistan with a stable country and as long as the Bush admin stays in Iraq they will never finish the job they started in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was just a stop over for Bush to get to Iraq and then to Iran. AQ has had far too much time to muddle things up in Afghanistan AND Pakistan.

I think it’s the way it was handled. Instead of a clean surgical cleansing of AQ, now matter how brutal, we lost attention and focus and didn’t finish the job. We would have sent a message to the world, and especially to the ones who wish to do us harm, that we will strike back hard when attacked.

But we pissed away our moral high ground by diverting into Iraq and I am afraid we are creating more terrorists than we are killing. Even in Afghanistan where we are too accepting of civilian deaths.

And I promise I am not channeling Pat Tillman.

You are also misstaken on the level of opposition to the invasion of Afghanistan here. The opposition is next to nil here. Most of the posters have consistently supported the decision to go after OBL, AQ and the Taliban. We still do.

We certainly should have held every Bin Laden we could find. And a little pressure on our “friends”, the Saudis, might have had better results.

I will read it.

By the way, I am glad to read did and still support going after AQ in Afghanistan.

I realize the Iraq War was controversial from the beginningm but I am honestly surprised by the level of opposition to the Afghanistan war I see here.

Please read this article and see if it raises any doubts in your mind about Bush’s motives regarding Iraq. I did and still support going after AQ in Afghanistan, but Iraq is Bush’s War, not America’s war. It wasn’t defensible then and isn’t now in my opinion. I don’t trust that lying POS to tell the time of day with any honesty if there were a motive for him to lie.

http://www.gnn.tv/articles/article.php?id=761

“Operation Falcon was a dry run to flex the executive powers. You comfortable with that?”

I really think that is putting an unreasonably nefarious spin on a joint federal-local law-enforcement operation. I am pretty certain that FALCON was not the first such operation.

With all due respect, you sound a little like far-right wingers in the 1990s who talked about “jack-booted thugs” and touted Ruby Ridge and Waco as evidence of a coming “new world order” under the U.N. or some other nefarious international organization.

Bush’s revision effectively overturns the Posse Comitatus Act which put strict limits on the executive’s power to use US troops in domestic situations.

Operation Falcon was a dry run to flex the executive powers. You comfortable with that? You still didn’t answer what happened to all those felons and just what were their crimes?

“which gives Bush the power to take command of National Guard units across the country which are traditionally under the control of the state governors.”

This is not new.

Presidents have long had the power to put the National Guard under federal control. President Eisenhower did so in 1957 when he put the Arkansas National Guard under federal control in order to protect African-American students — The Little Rock Nine — who were trying to enter a public school building.

Eisenhower also ordered 101st Airborne Division paratroopers to Little Rock.

In June 1963, President Kennedy also put a state National Guard under federal control after Alabama Gov. George Wallace refused to allow two black students to enter the University of Alabama. Kennedy used the National Guard to ensure the safety of the students.

Comment by Exley — October 31, 2007 @ 4:58 pm

That attitude has killed more people than gunpowder, smallpox and malaria, combined. It’s especially dangerous when national “leaders” base policy on the wishes of their “invisible friend”.

“Do you take Bush’ word at face value?”

I am old-school. I do tend to trust most of our elected leaders on matters of grave importance. Yes, I do take Bush at his word on serious matters of national security just as I was inclined to take Clinton at his word on national security matters….

I am aware that politics requires that people look at matters with a certain degree of cynicism and skepticism…

For example, when Bush or Pelosi or Cheney or Reid or whoever talk about things like health care reform or Social Security or S-CHIP and each side starts tossing around completely different sets of numbers that directly contradict one another, I don’t believe either side. It’s all BS from GOPers and Democrats. That’s one of the main reasons I admittedly don’t have a heck of a lot of interest in domestic affairs. That is why I almost never post on threads devoted to domestic policy. I just don’t trust either side to tell the complete and accurate truth when it comes to those types of issues.

But on grave matters of national security, I do tend to trust national leaders.