I do not know what helps or does not help the terrorists. And I’m certainly not saying that Barbara Starr helped the terrorists by publishing her report. I don’t think she did. Anymore than Glenn Greenwald did. And more importantly, I don’t think the vast majority of people you see opining on “what helps the terrorists" have any clue what does or doesn’t. But it is a problem for this country, and for the functioning of our democracy, when Glenn Greenwald’s leak reporting is treated so differently than the Barbara Starr leak reporting. When, as with Glenn Greenwald’s reporting, the leaks are not specifically designed to advance the Pentagon’s agenda, then we have shock and controversy, and calls for prosecution. But when they are [designed to advance the Pentagon’s agenda], as with the Barbara Starr reporting…radio silence.
There is a vast and growing web of secret government in this country. And simply cannot be the case, it is not acceptable, that the only things we know about it, are the things that the members of that secret government want us to know. Because at the end of the day, it is on us, it is on all of us, what our government does in our name.
Tag: terrorism
Chair yells at old man
Excellent questions all:
Mr. Eastwood, you called the failure to close the Guantanamo Bay penitentiary a broken promise. President Obama was prevented from closing Guantanamo by the Republican Congress, which refused to allocate the funds necessary to end it. Do you remember this this Washington Post headline, “House acts to block closing of Guantanamo”?
Mr. Eastwood you called “stupid” the idea of trying terrorists who attacked New York in a civilian courtroom in New York. But what would have better vindicated the strengths of America’s rule of law, the thing about the US most admired abroad? Mr. Eastwood, perhaps you spent so many years playing vigilantes who just blew people away (people who in the real world we would have needed to try to establish their guilt or innocence) that you want to run our judicial system as a kangaroo court.
You complained that there are 23 million unemployed Americans. But there are no measures by which W. created more jobs per month on average during his presidency than has Obama, and there is good reason to blame current massive unemployment on Bush’s policies of deregulating banks and other financial institutions, which caused the crash of 2008.
…over the past week I’ve been watching the almost pathetic desperation with which conservatives are trying to denigrate Obama’s part in the bin Laden operation. Really, it’s been awesome. On radio, TV, blogs, op-eds, pretty much everywhere, they’ve been virtually in a lather insisting that Obama himself played no real role; that he’s arrogantly hogging the spotlight; that he screwed up by announcing the operation so soon; that the entire success is really due to Bush-era torture policies; that he shouldn’t have killed bin Laden; that he’s being churlish by not giving George W. Bush enough credit; etc. etc. etc. It’s been a virtual feeding frenzy, and the stink of fear that Obama is appropriating the traditional Republican role as killer of bad guys is palpable.
[…] But Republicans already have a message that they want to stay laser-focused on: tackling the deficit. The fact that they’re taking so much time out from that to denigrate Obama’s role in the bin Laden operation suggests that they think this is a big deal. And if they think it’s a big deal, then maybe it is. They’re usually pretty good at reading the public mood, after all.
Kevin Drum
I’d say it has more to do with the GOP’s lockstep use of the bogeyman approach to 9/11: using Osama bin Laden as the unique personification of international terrorism on Earth and their implicit agreement that, until this particular bogeyman is caught, the War on Terror must continue without recourse to question or even reason, along with attendant military spending, shoot-from-the-hip wars in any country be they “ally” or ally, endless civil liberties roll-backs, and etc… They’ve pumped their followers and the country at large so full of this super-villain schtick that now, when a Democrat they constantly tar as weak, indecisive, ineligible, and “dangerously inexperienced” is the man who ordered a direct, face to face assassination inside a sovereign nation ostensibly our ally and but also who were notably not informed of said operation is decidedly inconvenient. Even Sainted Reagan never dared such a thing, preferring to invade largely defenseless islands or lob in a few bombs in vain hope of catching his particular bogeyman (a tactic Obama recently trotted out in Libya as well).
So, if you’re a Republican, this event cuts at both your go-to bogeyman of the last decade (and the reaction in the streets certainly was more on the order of that seen at the demonstrable end of a long war rather than an infamous international criminal finally being brought to justice; I’ll grant them that their noise machine definitely works) and simultaneously cuts against your beloved hobby horse about weak-kneed Democrats and their inability to “do” national defense. Pile on that Obama the campaigner said words along the lines of “bin Laden should be our priority,” Obama the President said the same, and Obama the results man delivered exactly that result. There’s simply no way to spin it away. Their inability to take this political lump, let Obama have a win in their home court, and just let it drop is all that’s keeping the “story” side of this event going.
Rarely do you see the GOP victimized by its own noise machine tactics, but every so often they seem to forget they run the noise machine and if they stop talking about it, the noise machine along with the broader MSM will go on to some other shiny penny in about 16 minutes. Doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.
I’d say it has more to do with the GOP’s lockstep use of the bogeyman approach to 9/11: using Osama bin Laden as the unique personification of international terrorism on Earth and their implicit agreement that, until this particular bogeyman is caught, the War on Terror must continue without recourse to question or even reason, along with attendant military spending, shoot-from-the-hip wars in any country be they “ally” or ally, endless civil liberties roll-backs, and etc… They’ve pumped their followers and the country at large so full of this super-villain schtick that now, when a Democrat they constantly tar as weak, indecisive, ineligible, and “dangerously inexperienced” is the man who ordered a direct, face to face assassination inside a sovereign nation ostensibly our ally and but also who were notably not informed of said operation is decidedly inconvenient. Even Sainted Reagan never dared such a thing, preferring to invade largely defenseless islands or lob in a few bombs in vain hope of catching his particular bogeyman (a tactic Obama recently trotted out in Libya as well).
So, if you’re a Republican, this event cuts at both your go-to bogeyman of the last decade (and the reaction in the streets certainly was more on the order of that seen at the demonstrable end of a long war rather than an infamous international criminal finally being brought to justice; I’ll grant them that their noise machine definitely works) and simultaneously cuts against your beloved hobby horse about weak-kneed Democrats and their inability to “do” national defense. Pile on that Obama the campaigner said words along the lines of “bin Laden should be our priority,” Obama the President said the same, and Obama the results man delivered exactly that result. There’s simply no way to spin it away. Their inability to take this political lump, let Obama have a win in their home court, and just let it drop is all that’s keeping the “story” side of this event going.
Rarely do you see the GOP victimized by its own noise machine tactics, but every so often they seem to forget they run the noise machine and if they stop talking about it, the noise machine along with the broader MSM will go on to some other shiny penny in about 16 minutes. Doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.
Their happiness will turn into sorrow, and their blood will be mixed with their tears. We call upon our Muslim people in Pakistan, on whose land Sheikh Osama was killed, to rise up and revolt.
al Qaeda, responding to and admitting the death of Osama bin Laden.
They are apparently unaware that he a) has been dead for years and kept on ice until Obama needed him for reelection b) is still very much alive c) never existed in the first place and/or d) never concerned us much anyway.
They are apparently unaware that he a) has been dead for years and kept on ice until Obama needed him for reelection b) is still very much alive c) never existed in the first place and/or d) never concerned us much anyway.
In 2005, the Bush CIA actually closed its unit whose mission had been to hunt Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants. We don‘t know where Osama bin Laden was until 2005. But we do know that the home, that he was found in, was built for him in 2005. That same year that the CIA closed the unit that was hunting bin Laden.
Somehow that year, bin Laden got the feeling that he could settle down comfortably in a walled fortress in a Pakistan suburb.
Lawrence O’Donnell
So Bush really did lay the foundation for bin Laden’s eventual capture…
(via squee-gee)
We find that enhanced expenditures have been excessive: to be deemed cost-effective in analyses that substantially bias the consideration toward the opposite conclusion, they would have to deter, prevent, foil, or protect against 1,667 otherwise successful Times-Square type attacks per year, or more than four per day.
John Mueller and Mark Stewart report back after analyzing Homeland Security spending. Word.
Curveball II
I’d say this paragraph pretty well sums up American “terrorist policy” from 9/12/2001 on:
…whatever the truth about the detainee’s role before his capture in 2002, it is receding into the past. So, presumably, is the value of whatever information he possesses. Still, his jailers have continued to press him for answers. His assessment of January 2008 — six years after he arrived in Cuba — contended that it was worthwhile to continue to interrogate him, in part because he might know about Mullah Omar’s “possible whereabouts.”
The Authoritarian Media
Los Angeles Times: Shut up and be scanned
Boston Globe: The new “enhanced” patdown by airport screeners has sparked an unfortunate backlash among some fliers and privacy advocates
Springfield Republican: Let’s consider these searches the 21st-century equivalent of a WWII rationing card.
Spokane Spokesman-Review: TSA is on our side. […] [M]odest traveler inconvenience is a reasonable price to pay for a little added peace of mind.
TSA Enhanced Pat Downs : The Screeners Point Of View
Molester, pervert, disgusting, an embarrassment, creep. These are all words I have heard today at work describing me, said in my presence as I patted passengers down. These comments are painful and demoralizing, one day is bad enough, but I have to come back tomorrow, the next day and the day after that to keep hearing these comments. If something doesn’t change in the next two weeks I don’t know how much longer I can withstand this taunting. I go home and I cry. I am serving my country, I should not have to go home and cry after a day of honorably serving my country.
It’s just as bad for them as you might imagine. Read the whole thing.
(via Instapaper)
Lemkin 