How does a law offering telecom immunity seem like a good deal to democrats? Unbelievable. I’m really starting to dislike Pelosi. What possible leverage could the republicans and Bush have to push this through? Hopefully there are enough democrats who will not toe the party line and will fight this passing.
Democrats will always disappoint you. Their morals depend on public sentiment and/or personal expediency. Barack – public financing Barack – really didn’t mean it when he supported gun bans before Heller Clinton – the original FISA fellow; remember ECHLON? Democratic convention – no fried foods – the food police are coming to you soon. Try to by a snack and soda at a school lately? Bush Lied! – oops – “largely supported by intelligence findings”
Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Feel free to delete.
BTW, even though Republicans profess better morals, many have a hard time living up to them. Power corrupts absolutely.
“In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed. … There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate.”
Sorry, I haven’t heard Heller Clinton yet, is that supposed to be an amalgam of Bill and Hillary?
I’m not a staunch supporter of democrats by any means, I just think they’re better than republicans for the most part. I come up libertarian on most political tests. I had my hat in for Kucinich personally, but I think Barak is a better option than either McCain or Hillary.
Separate sentences. Heller is second amendment rights. Clinton was just a putz who did what Bush is doing, only using a foreign government to do the spying. Britain and Australia listened in on all the calls and gave the information to the US. That way the US could say we don’t do domestic spying. The formating kind of messed everything up. Should have used more periods.
The Democratic Senate committee report on ‘Bush Lied’ noted that everything he said was ‘substantiated by know intelligence’. He did not lie, look at all the statements by, Bill Clinton, Albright and the the others prior to Bush’s administration, outlining the threat that Sadaam represented. Electronic intel we are good at, the human side – the stuff that is really needed, we’re not so good at. Bluffing worked a bit too well for Sadaam and he paid the price.
Don’t get me wrong, I dislike any domestic warrantless spying whether it’s done by a republican administration or a democratic one. I’ve said before that Janet Reno was out of control and led some really dumb crusades. I do think clinton was a better president than Bush though, but he certainly made choices that I don’t support. That doesn’t make them equal.
Bush used intelligence gathered by a spying operation specifically created out of the pentagon by Cheney and Rumfeld because they were unwilling to trust the CIAs assessments. There was plenty of intelligence that was exactly on target with its assessments of both Iraq’s current capabilities and its intentions. They intentionally sent different people, outside the intelligence community to gather evidence in favor of their position regardless of how poorly sourced it was, then dismissed concerns of the CIA who told them it was bunk. Trusting Chalabi was just inane, and plenty of people knew it. Like the committee said, they knew the evidence was bad, tenet told them so, and they still dumped it on the US people and the UN.
But to be fair, I think there were democrats who were knew just as much, and bear just as much of the burden.
Clinton and Albright clearly understood that Saddam did not pose a great enough threat to engage in an all out war to remove him. The sanctions and no-fly zones were working and the NIE reflected that. Cheney felt that the CIA did not have accurate information because he didn’t trust them after they didn’t warn us of the previous invasion of Kuwait. Not to mention that neither Cheney or Rumsfeld liked Tenet. That’s not a failure of intelligence, it’s a failure of leadership.
I’m actually in the process of writing something up about how I’m concerned about Obama’s recent changes in position. It’s understandable to make considered changes in light of new information, but these changes seem like pandering, and I hate pandering. I’m also deeply annoyed by the ongoing pure political game of screwing around with policy concerns for the sake of securing seats and making a good run at the presidency at the expense of the people.
FWIW I support the supreme court’s decision on Heller. Although I do think the reasoning was a little wonky by Scalia, especially since it seems in opposition to his earlier positions on “living constitution” interpretations. It also seemed like a really loose and incomplete ruling that’s going to open the door to a lot of gun regulation challenges in court which ultimately are going to end up back in front of the supremes. Seems like you’d want to just knock it out and define exactly what is and isn’t allowed per the constitution.