The Good Democrat

American Terrorism

That’s what it is called when you kill a man with the intent to change policy. Killing an abortion doctor is terrorism. It’s not just murder. And shooting him as he is going to church? What the fuck is wrong with these bastards on the right?

I think we will see more of these kinds of incidents. I think we will also see other acts of violence while Obama is president. Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are doing a fantastic job of riling up their listeners to violence. It won’t be long before there will be an attempt on Obama’s life. It won’t be long before we see another bombing like the one in Oklahoma City.

Glenn Beck Is Inciting His Viewers to Break The Law

That’s what it comes down to it.

“I want to be clear on one thing, I am not advocating that people should not pay their income tax. This is a spooky, spooky area. […] But what, if for argument’s sake, a million Americans intentionally did not pay their taxes?”

Does Mr. Beck, as a Mormon, need a reminder in the 13 Articles of Faith? Why does he incite his viewers to willfully violate the laws of the nation in which they reside?

A Stinging Rebuke of Cheney and Rice by Richard Clarke

Well said dude.

Yes, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice may have been surprised by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — but it was because they had not listened. And their surprise led them to adopt extreme counterterrorism techniques — but it was because they rejected, without analysis, the tactics the Clinton administration had used. The measures they uncritically adopted, which they simply assumed were the best available, were in fact unnecessary and counterproductive.

“I’ll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities,” Cheney said in his recent speech. But this defense does not stand up. The Bush administration’s response actually undermined the principles and values America has always stood for in the world, values that should have survived this traumatic event. The White House thought that 9/11 changed everything. It may have changed many things, but it did not change the Constitution, which the vice president, the national security adviser and all of us who were in the White House that tragic day had pledged to protect and preserve.

Well said.

Dan’s Commentary on the Scriptures

I created a new blog called Dan’s Commentary on the Scriptures. Please take a look. It’s pretty self explanatory. I want to have a place to comment on the scriptures as I read them. I’ve only posted one thought so far, but it’s a start.

The Use of Torture Endangered American Soldiers

Don’t take it from me, take it from the man in charge of interrogations in Iraq. He ought to know.

White Conservative Men Call Sotomayor Racist

Keep it up white male conservatives. That’s all who will remain in your stupid party.

Economic Sanctions Only Go So Far

North Korea is proving that.

Choe Thae Bok, a high-ranking party official, was quoted by North Korea’s official news agency as saying that the nuclear test “was a grand undertaking” to protect the country against “the U.S. imperialists’ unabated threat to mount a pre-emptive nuclear attack and (put) sanctions and pressure upon it.”

A North Korean newspaper, Minju Joson, said in a commentary Wednesday that Pyongyang does not fear repercussions.

“It is a laughable delusion for the United States to think that it can get us to kneel with sanctions,” it said. “We’ve been living under U.S. sanctions for decades, but have firmly safeguarded our ideology and system while moving our achievements forward. The U.S. sanctions policy toward North Korea is like striking a rock with a rotten egg.”

What I don’t know is if China is truly mad at the North Koreans, or if it is a show. If they are truly mad at the North Koreans, then more potent action could be taken against North Korea. If it is merely a show, then we’re back to the norm.

The 83 Waterboardings of Abu Zubaydah

Brilliant, and probably fairly accurate.

Even Under Obama, The United States Just Doesn’t Get it

Read this article.

The United States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to current and former American government officials.

There are many problems with this.

1. The United States still thinks it must rely on illegal techniques to interrogate prisoners.

2. The United States doesn’t trust previously reliable techniques that are legal.

3. The cultural gap between the United States and Islamic cultures is painfully evident. The United States is basically admitting it has no clue about our Islamic enemies.

4. The United States is saying it trusts what other countries tell them from the torture they employ on detainees rendered to them by the Americans.

5. The United States thinks other countries, (even closest allies, like Israel), would tell the United States what is most beneficial for the United States instead of what is in the best interest of said country. For example, if a detainee in Israel’s hands told Israeli interrogators that there was no connection between Al-Qaeda and Iran, Israel would not necessarily pass that on to the Americans, because it is not in Israel’s best interest that the United States know that Iran is not close to Al-Qaeda. For Israel, the more antagonistic the United States is toward Iran, the better off they think they are.

6. The United States has not learned from previous failed incidents, such as Al-Libi, tortured by the Egyptians, telling his interrogators what he thought they wanted to hear. He said to the Egyptian torturers that Saddam and Bin Laden had close connections, which of course was not true. But that one incident led to the United States going into Iraq less than two years later, which was totally unnecessary.

7. The United States thinks other countries that have taken the gloves off get actual actionable accurate intelligence from the people they torture, else why would the United States render to these torturing countries?

8. The United States still thinks the use of torture does NOT radicalize the people they torture, thus turning the detainees into a self-fulfilling prophecy. They become the radicalized terrorists we fear. The countries we render to, Syria and Egypt, have some of the most radicalized populations in the world. Why would they? Could it possibly be because the dictatorship states there treat their people so harshly? Why would we ever trust those states to give us accurate intelligence?

Why does the United States not get this? It’s not that hard to understand. Com’on Mr. Obama. You’re smarter than this. Don’t listen to the generals. Fire them all. Even Petraeus. They don’t get it, Mr. Obama. They just don’t get it, and they will be the cause of many many more Americans dead by their willful ignorance.

Israeli Distaste With Obama

They throw him a bone. Nothing substantive. No meat. Just a bone.

What Happens When the Minority Has Too Much Electoral Power

The state breaks and crumbles.

It should be noted, this isn’t usually a problem with minority parties, but when the minority party becomes so radicalized and hardcore extreme. The California Republican party is probably the worst of the worst in America. There are probably no more extreme members of the Republican party than there are in California, yeah, not even in Oklahoma, or Montana, or even the South! The Republican Party in California is holding the state by the balls, squeezing tight until the state will crumble to the ground. Such power should not be had in the hands of such a negative force as the California Republican party.

Jon Huntsman Gets What Mitt Romney Never Got

Forget the religious right. Stick with the moderates.

Harry Reid is a Coward

Indeed

“QUESTION: If the United States — if the United States thinks that these people should be held, why shouldn’t they be held in the United States? Why shouldn’t the U.S. take those risks, the attendant risk of holding them, since it’s the one that says they should be held?

REID: I think there’s a general feeling, as I’ve already said, that the American people, and certainly the Senate, overwhelmingly doesn’t want terrorists to be released in the United States. And I think we’re going to stick with that.

QUESTION: What about in imprisoned in the United States?

REID: If you’re…

(CROSSTALK)

REID: If people are — if terrorists are released in the United States, part of what we don’t want is them be put in prisons in the United States. We don’t want them around the United States.”

What a stupid moron.

Never Take What the CIA Tells You At Face Value

it just isn’t wise practice. These guys are trained to lie. It is in their blood. They don’t know how to tell the truth anymore.

The CIA Lies

Imagine that, a spy organization lying. No freaking way!

Congressional And Senate Democrats Are Cowards

the whole lot of them. bastards.

CIA Fears New Rules To Dampen Future Interrogations

Give it up to Walter Pincus for being the CIA’s mouthpiece. But, dude, DUH! This is EXACTLY what should happen. It was never the CIA’s responsibility to interrogate prisoners. That’s not their job. It never was. And they suck at it, frankly. The more we get interrogations away from the hands of the CIA the better off we are.

Note also this particular passage:

Under an executive order signed by Obama on Jan. 20, the Field Manual is “the law of the land. . . . There is nothing outside it now,” one intelligence official said. But according to several past agency and military officials, the Field Manual is sometimes so broad as to be unclear.

Its section on interrogation bans “violence, threats, or impermissible or unlawful physical contact,” without specifying what is sanctioned. The manual also says an interrogator cannot threaten “the removal of protections afforded by law.”

Present and past CIA officials maintain that other legal techniques exist beyond those mentioned in the Field Manual that should be available for use. Panetta has said he would go to the president for authority to use them if he believed it necessary.

The CIA doesn’t know what the limits are? They were so used to going beyond the limits that they don’t know where those limits are anymore! Why the hell would ANYONE trust interrogation in the hands of America’s CIA?!?!?

Jesse Ventura Rocks!

Preach it brotha!

Onward Christian Soldiers Indeed

a must read. Look at the pictures in the slideshow. This was Donald Rumsfeld, using Bible texts to rally the troops to war in Iraq.

Donald “stuff happens” Rumsfeld, one of the worst, if not the worst, Secretary of Defense America has ever had, under the worst president America has ever had. What an awful combination!

The CIA Lies and Misleads

Jeez, that’s the freaking job!