Irrelevant. Congress can pass a law saying Bush is dictator for life, but it doens't mean a thing until the Constitution is amended. And for Constitution-supsending purposes, a war isn't a War until Congress delcares one, which they haven't. Even SCOTUS, which has been rubber-stamping law enforcement tactics for decades, ruled that the AUMF was *not* a blank check for the president to do as he pleased in their Hamdan decision.
The issue isn't whether or not a war has formally been declared by Congress, it is whether or not the President has been granted wartime powers from Congress. There hasn't been a formal declaration of war from Congress since World War II, but Congress has given the President wartime powers several times since then. The 1973 War Powers resolution specifically gives the President special wartime powers if Congress approves, and the 2001 AUMF was clearly such an approval.
And the SCOTUS ruled in Hamdi that intelligence gathering is a valid use of Presidential wartime powers.
No, it's not. This "war on terror" will be every bit as successful as the "war on drugs" - i.e. not at all. In fact, so far they've only managed to destabalize countries and produce *more* terrorists and terrorism. What would be far more practical and make far more sense would be to go back to what many people were talking about in the immediate aftermath of 911 - that the U.S. would make no distinction between terrorists and the governments that sheltered them. It's a clear, well defined approach so we wont "always be at war with Oceana".
No, the war on terrorism has already eliminated the two largest state sponsors of terror, and over 70% of the senior leadership of the worlds largest terror organization. Any comparison to the so-called "war on drugs" is a red herring.
NO, THE WAR IN IRAQ HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE WAR ON TERROR. NOTHING How many hijackers were from Iraq? Zero. How much did Saddam have to do with Al Qaeda or their attacks? Zero. How much of a threat was Saddam to the United States? Zero. Calling Iraq "part of the war on terror" is a lie.
Do you think that writing in bold caps makes it true? There is no question that Saddam Hussein supported terrorists, and any argument to the contrary flies in the face of 25 years of prior history in Iraq. Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism - period. Any "war on terror" that did not include the largest and most defiant state sponsor of terror would have been incomplete - period. Any argument to the contrary is made in complete ignorance.
Your argument displays a fundamental misunderstanding of what the war on terror is actually about. It isn't a fight against "those guys how attacked us on 9/11", and it isn't the "war on Al Qaeda". It is the war on terror, and is designed to eliminate the threat of global terrorism, regardless of their relationship with the 9/11 attacks.
If our government worked the way they intended, Bush would have been forced to resign when it turned out that no, Iraq did not have any WMD's, and was not an imminent threat to the United States so grave that we had no choice but to take him out immediatly. If our government worked the way the founders intended, Bush would have been impeached for his indefinete detentions of American citizens and his blatantly un-Constitutional domestic spying.
Every justification that has been used to support the war in Iraq has since been validated by independant reviews. You may not agree with those justifications, but that hardly invalidates them.
And I would say that your argument for impeachment is far more unconstitutional than any of the alleged "violations" of the current administration. Impeachment is not provided for in the case of political disagreements or revenge -- that is what elections are for. It is provided for in the case of high crimes and misdemeanors, which so far is only a wet dream fantasy of some of the President's most rabid opposition.
Well, first of all, I said that Iraq was one of the largest state sponsors of terror, not one of the largest state sponsors of Al Qaeda. If you haven't seen a "shred of proof" about this, I have no idea where you were looking. Iraq was on the State Department's "State Sponsors of Terrorism" list for the better part of two decades. Iraq and Hussein provided open support for many internationally recognized terrorist organizations, including Abu Nadal, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, Carlos the Jackal, PKK, Ansar al-Islam, and Hamas to name a few. The Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) was also implicated in several terrorism plots, including the attempted bombing of a radio tower in Prague, and the attempted assassination of a former US President. This is why the legislature passed a resolution in 1998 stating that "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime", which happens to be exactly what George Bush is doing right now.
However, there are still concrete links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The Clinton State Department issued an Indictment of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden in 1998, charging that "al Qaeda reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq". This came after Saddam Hussein offered political asylum to Bin Laden after he was expelled from Saudi Arabia and left Afghanistan.
Not to mention the fact that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other Al Qaeda fighters were allowed to set up and operate Ansar al-Islam within Iraqi borders following Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in December 2001, and that Mohammed Atta had allegedly met with ISS officials in Prague in April 2001.
1) Only congress can declare war - and hence enable the wartime powers of the president (see that constitution thing).
Congress did give the President all wartime powers on September 18th 2001 when they authorized him to use "all necessary force... in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States" The 2001 AUMF specifically grants the President war powers dictated by section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution.
) Even if I concede that we are at war, who is the enemy? How do we decide when it's over? A war on "terrorism" is not well defined - you can always say there may be someone plotting something that falls under that term.
That is some twisted logic. I would say that always having people plotting acts of terror against us to cause us harm is an argument for, not against, a war on terrorism.
We have not had a "terrorist" atrack on the US in 5 years. Where is this war you speak of? Iraq? That's "peace keeping", not war any more.
The war in Iraq is a critical part on the war of terror because you can't fight terrorism while ignoring one of the largest state sponsors of terror. But the war on terror is also being "fought" on many different fronts, including intelligence, front-line defense, strategic allies, detention, etc. These are some of the reasons why we haven't had a terrorist attack on the US for 5 years.
Yes, the modern world has problems that were not anticipated when the constitution was written. However, the behavior of the current administration IS the type of thing the constitution was designed to protect us from, and those protections are getting thrown out.
What protections are being thrown out? The judicial branch is reviewing these programs, and the legislative branch is voting on new legal provisions for or against them. This is exactly how the founding fathers designed our Government to work.
You have a typo. You typed "openly" when you meant to type "allegedly", and considering where that allegation came from it's surprising that people still toss it around as though it is fact.
I disagree. The whole point of a representative Republic is to have elected representatives that reflect the views of the people who elected them. That clearly was not the case in Texas prior to the 2003 redistricting.
It's an abuse of the election process to redistrict in order to increase a party's representation in legislature. It's disenfranchisement of some of the people.
Actually, no. The 2003 redistricting plan corrected the disenfranchisement of the majority of Texas voters. 56% of Texas voters had voted for Republican representation in the house, but the Democrats still had a two seat congressional advantage for Texas because of poor districting lines. The redistricting plan fixed that problem.
Wrong. Congressional redistricting isn't "messing" with the election process, it is part of the election process. SCOTUS confirmed this two months ago.
the Republican party has been demonstrably messing with the election process
I can only assume that you actually meant "allegedly" when you typed "demonstrably" because nobody has demonstrated anything about the election process being "messed" with by the Republican party. There sure have been plenty of baseless allegations, though.
When Reagan/Bush installed supply-side, they first quadrupled the size of government, and continued its expansion for 12 years, generating more debt than previously believed possible.
Wrong. I'm not sure what you mean by "quadrupled the size of government", but that is completely false under any reasonable definition of the size of government. In 1980, the year before Reagan's policies took effect, government expenditures equaled 21.7% of GDP. In 1989, which was the last year of the Reagan/Bush policies before raising taxes, government expenditures were 21.2% of GDP. And deficit spending during the Reagan years was nowhere near some of the extreme deficits seen in the past 100 years. In fact, the 8 year average annual deficit between 1981 and 1989 was only 1% higher than the average annual deficit for the entire 20th century.
All of which came home to roost by 1990, a collapse that lasted 4 years, corrected only by the unexpected Dotcom Bubble (managed by Clinton).
The economic slowdown of the early 1990's came after the Reagan economic policies had been abandoned by George HW Bush and the Democratic legislature. You will note that taxes were raised, including a 10% raise in the top marginal rate, in Q3 of 1990, and the first quarter of negative GDP growth immediately followed in Q4 of 1990.
Not to mention the 1982 recession, or the seeds of the one we've been in for the past 5 years: 10-11 years of documented recession out of 25, despite all the book juggling to cover it up.
The 1982 recession was an intentional move by Reagan and Volcker to get us out of the mess caused by Carter's incompetence. Intentionally tightening the money supply eliminated inflation, and the tax cuts spurred the second longest period of economic expansion in the past century.
And the last 3 years have seen an average quarterly GDP growth of almost 4%. It is laughable that you could consider this the "seeds" of a recession.
Bush Jr's tax cuts haven't improved "the economy", just the sectors favored by Bush's base of rich bankers. The stock market's value has dropped compared to the value of global equity. Even Bush admits the economy is "in the tank" if you're just a regular American. Income has shrunk consistently under Reagan/Bush administrations, unless you're a bank.
Wrong again. Salary and wage trends are reported every month in the BLS employment situation summary, and they clearly show that wages are outpacing inflation over the past 5 years. And the median real family income for all income groups saw significant rises throughout the 8 Reagan years. You really can't keep making this stuff up.
How so? The UN as well as the majority of the western world agrees with us that Iran has no business developing nuclear technology. Any attack on Iran would come with the support of the international community, and would come after all other diplomatic options had been exhausted."
1. Replace Iran with Iraq
2. Re-read your sentence and
3. Realize that you're full of it.
You're still living in a pre-March 20, 2003 world!
1. Read the 17 unanimously passed UN resolutions not only authorizing but requiring the use of military force to ensure compliance
2. Re-read your sentence and
3. Realize that you're full of it.
More seriously, the animosity against the US has never been so strong in the Arab street as far as I can remember (I know 'cause I spend quite some time in many of them a year). Plus, I'm Arab myself, which helps to connect with people and get their real feelings. I currently reside in Sweden, and strangely enough I've seen many times graffitis saying "Fuck USA" or other not-so-nice things
I'd say that animosity against the US in the Arab street was pretty strong in 1979 when Arabs stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and took 66 people hostage. That certainly wasn't George W. Bush's fault.
Again, I can only speak of recent history (i.e: As far as I can remember). I can't think of any other time where the American administration's being so open in their support for Israel.
So you equate open support for Israel with "arrogance"?
Under the treaty of non-proliferation (which Israel didn't even bother with), Iran has every right to develop nuclear energy.
Only a great fool would believe that Iran does not intent to develop nuclear weapons with thir nuclear program, especially considering that Russia has offered them as much enriched Uranium as they want for energy generation, and they are already sitting on one of the largest energy reserves in the world.
Now, when you say that the attack would come with the support of the international community, you're deeply mistaken; Neither Russia nor China will ever allow that, but that won't stop, will it? Remember Irak 3 years ago?
Russia and China both voted to authorize military action against Iraq, why would it be any different with Iran if they posed a similar threat with WMD's?
Nope. But I'm afraid that hatred is now many folds what it used to be.
I don't know how you can even begin to try and back that statement up. Did the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor because they loved us? Did the Soviet Union put missiles in Cuba because they loved us? Did Hezbollah bomb the Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983 because they loved us? Did Bin Ladin blow up the US embassies in Africa, blow up the USS Cole, and use hijacked planes as missiles to crash into populated areas because he loved us? How are things any different today?
Your government's foreign policy is now blatantly arrogant as opposed to the more furtive policies it had before. Plus, the internet sure helped undermine the preponderance of mainstream media and their biased stories.
It wasn't "blatantly arrogant" to rebel against the government who brought us here? It wasn't "blatantly arrogant" to throw their tea in a harbor and right a war against them? It wasn't "blatantly arrogant" to claim a "manifest destiny" of spreading our freedoms and form of Government across the globe? Once again, how are things any different today?
The failure of the last WTO round is a clear example of the world not putting up with the US crap anymore; No matter, you still managed to get juicy trade agreements with many countries by coersion and/or backing up tyrranies.
No, we get juicy trade agreements because we are the richest and the strongest, and people cannot afford to ignore us. We have the balls to affect changes in the world that directly benefit us and others. That is what makes us so great.
Watch Mexico closely during the next days as you'll very likely dispatch troops to silence the resistance against the results of the rigged presidentials.
What?
Now, the ulimate alienation of the world's population would be to attack Iran . That'll be the final straw!
How so? The UN as well as the majority of the western world agrees with us that Iran has no business developing nuclear technology. Any attack on Iran would come with the support of the international community, and would come after all other diplomatic options had been exhausted.
No, because those luxury items do nothing to grow the economy. The brokers are rich, too, and reinvest in other luxury items that don't grow the economy, either. Even the name "trickle down" admits that the flow of capital from rich people stays in their own rich club, and only tiny amounts can even be promoted to flow elsewhere in propaganda for it to be believable by anyone.
It seems that you don't really know that trickle down really means. Of course luxury items grow the economy. Boats, cars, airplanes, and houses don't just magically appear from the luxury elves, and they certainly aren't manufactured in a factory fully of rich workers. They are made, serviced, and operated by the middle to lower class. A certain rich person that lives in my area owns a company that employs hundreds of people just to cook his meals, clean his house, set up his electronic goodies (home theater, networks, video conferences, etc), maintain his cars, book his travel, and wipe his butt. If he didn't have that wealth, that is an immediate impact on several hundred people, not to mention the 20,000+ people that work for his namesake company that have directly benefited from his success. That is the essense of trickle down.
uh, there was a massive energy crisis during the carter administration. a huge spanner in the economic workings of the country that just happen to ocur under his watch. blaming carter for the actions of opec is a little bit unfair.
So it is "unfair" to attribute Carter's incompetance to the inflation and stagnation of the late 1970's, but it is entirely accurate to blame George W. Bush for the stagnate economy between 2001 and 2003, right? Keep in mind that the first quarter of GDP contraction came well over a year before Bush's first budget was in effect.
now, if you're looking for a president who really tanked the economy, i'd suggest reagan. in his eight years he moved the national deficit from 2.5% ($80 bn) of gdp to 6% ($250 bn). if you wonder why the national debt is so out of control, it's because ron spent it all on military adventurism while cutting taxes for the upper 10%.
Wow. Average annual GDP growth of over 8% qualifies as "tanking the economy"? Rising real family median incomes across all income groups qualifies as "tanking the economy"? Taking interest rates from historically high levels to low levels while at the same time reducing double-digit inflation qualifies at "tanking the ecnomoy"? If that is the case, I sure hope that the economy "tanks" every year!
By the way, national debt is not out of control. The Reagan deficits of 4-6% of GDP were well within historical norms, and the current federal debt level of 64% of GDP is right in line with where it should be and less than half of what other industrialized countries have.
Wrong. The rich don't get their wealth by hording luxury items. They get their wealth by contributing to a growing economy, and the more incentive they have to help grow the economy, the better off everybody is. This is why supply side economics work so well.
First, 'double-didgit' inflation was initiated under Nixon, partially to pay for Vietnam, but mostly a result of Nixon's choice to make the dollar fiat, as opposed to redeemable for gold. Inflation stayed in double-digits under Ford, whose idea to beat inflation consisted of wearing buttons with "Whip Inflation Now" printed on them. Inflation was tamed under Carter thanks to Volker jacking up the interest rate. An unpopular solution, but sometimes its necessary to take the punch bowl away. Reagan took the credit, and dumped Volker for Greenspan when he had the chance to restart the 'play now pay later' budget monkeyshines.
Ah, revisionist history at it's finest. I highly recommend that you look up what inflation rates really were during the 1970's. They spiked in 1974 at 11.1%, but had dropped over 50% by the time Carter was elected, only to spike back up into the double digits for the remainder of his presidency. Carter's disastrous appointment of William Miller to the FED made a bad situation much worse, and his "solution" to that problem was to fire his Treasury Secretary and appoint Miller in his stead. He was then basically forced to appoint Volcker, but he kept a very tight reign on the FED's interest rate policies. It wasn't until the results of the 1980 election were apparent that Volcker's hand was freed, and he then worked with Reagan to orchestrate a recession in 1981 and 1982 to eliminate the stagnation and spark growth.
Speaking of Greenspan, its funny how Carter gets pegged as raising taxes when payroll 'deductions' were doubled by Reagan under Greenspan's insistence that the additional money would make SS fiscally sound. Reagan ended up wasting the additional money for the Star Wars boondoggle.
It's true that Carter didn't actually raise taxes very much. Thanks to rate creep, the nationwide tax burden was already at near historic levels. Reagan pushed through one of the largest tax cuts in history, and the Democratic legislature only managed to chip away or delay the phasing in of those tax cuts. The 1983 Social Security "solution" was the only significant tax increase during the Reagan years, but the cut in income taxes more than offset this increase.
Another thing Reagan gets credit for is strengthening the US military. It was infact Carter who brought back the use of Special Forces after the cuts in the programs under Ford led to the failed Desert Eagle mission.
You have GOT to be kidding, right? The US Military was a pathetic joke during the Carter years. Carter's failed "support" of the Shah during the Iranian Revolution was sickening. He kept promising full support but only figured out how to send a carrier to float around in circles in the Indian ocean before ordering it back. His pathetic response to the hostage situation gave rise to modern Islamic terrorism. An overwhelming, Operation Enduring Freedom-type response to the Islamic theocracy and hostage crisis would have changed the dynamic of the region for good. Instead, we couldn't even land a helicopter without killing our own men. Khomeini himself even said that this emboldened his movement and allowed him to expand his rhetoric. The rest of Carter's military "strengthenging" was in reality complete incompetence and indecisiveness, such as proposing and then scrapping a program to land airplanes inside a stadium. This problem was certainly not fixed until Reagan took office.
Carter's mistakes - maybe funding the Afghanistan resistance, which gave us Bin Ladin. The Carter Doctrine, which did nothing to discourage America's dependence on the Middle East's oil, and possibly not looking 'Presidential' enough to win another four years.
Carter's real problem was that he stuttered and stammered in the face of real and serious problems. You simply can't put an a sweater for TV and
Obviously he failed as an educator as well. If you had even spent 20 seconds learning anything about Iranian history, you would have discovered that the roots of Iran's issues lie a little further in the past. Try here. Iran had an elected democratic form of government before we decided it wasn't doing what we wanted it to with our oil. Ahem, I meant their oil.
No, the root of the Iranian revolution was the fact that the Carter administration kept promising the Shah that the US fully backed him, but only managed to send an aircraft carrier to float in circles across the Indian Ocean and then turn back without helping a bit. Had Carter been able to provide any kind of tactical support to the Shah, we would not have seen the rise of a militant Islamic theocracy and the complete destabilization of the region.
Not to mention the spectacle that he called "Operation Eagle Claw", which turned out to be one of the most embarrassing military "missions" we have ever suffered through because of his incompetence. If you want to talk about our "national credibility", there is a shining example of how we can embolden our enemies while making ourselves look like complete idiots at the same time. No wonder Islamic terrorists started attacking American interests after that -- we couldn't even land a helicoptor without taking some of our own men out.
Considering that 99.99999999999999999999% of the reason we had an economic crisis in the 1970's stemmed from our overreliance on cheap, imported oil, dumping those long-festering issues on Carter's head have to count as the most disingenious crap I've ever heard.
Doubly so, considering the lengths to which Carter went in his effort to extricate us from a purely idiotic situation where we were funding maniacs who wanted to kill us by buying the oil they made.
No, 99.9999% of the reason we had an economic crisis in the 1970's was because Carter failed to offer any real solution to the problem other than some philosophical "We need more confidence" garbage. His disastrous appointment of William Miller to the FED made a bad situation much worse, and his "solution" to that problem was to fire his Treasury Secretary and appoint Miller in his stead. His reluctance to then appoint Volcker to the FED, and his subsequent tight-handed control over Volcker only managed to create another recession without any relief from stagflation. It wasn't until Carter lost and Volcker's hand was freed that any real economic relief came. Other than putting on a sweater, what did he do to stop inflation, reduce energy dependency, and lower unemployment? You'll probably have to think pretty hard on that one.
Oddly enough, the fact that our nation remains in that idiotic situation can be dumped squarely on conservative heads, as those same people have openly conspired to keep us chuffing away at oil like there's no tomorrow, intentionally lowering efficiency and deriding conservation efforts as (as best I can understand it), "wimpy."
No, the world remains in this "idiotic" situation because energy is one of the most fundamental resources required for an advanced civilization to operate, and no matter how much we try, we need it in order to function. Blaming conservatives for this is quite puzzling because they are not the ones fighting to block every effort to fully utilize our own energy resources because Bambi might have to look at an oil rig that is 50 miles away.
By the way, energy efficiency is the highest it's ever been in history, and CAFE ratings have been raised to their highest level ever under Bush. So much for your "lowering efficiency" claim.
At any rate, the damage Bush is doing to our country right now makes anything Carter might have fictionally wrought pale in comparison. Carter took over from six years of bumbling Nixonitude (and it was in Nixon's term that the energy crisis really got its start, rem
Wow. Congratulations. You managed to work in a meaningless cliche on the first line of your post!
International law aside,
Yup, better put that aside, because according to UNSEC #687, this war was not only justified, but required under international law.
Bush, Cheney and Rumsfield should have all resigned on the spot once it was demonstrated that Saddam had no WMD's. They've spend hundreds of billions of dollars, gotten thousands of U.S. soldiers killed, and tied up our military for bogus reasons. They should have resigned, but we haven't even gotten a real appology. To hell with them and anyone who makes excuses for them.
Well that would have been silly because it has never been demonstrated that "Saddam had no WMD's". On the contrary, the ISG concluded that Iraq was most certainly in violation of the UN requirements regarding WMD disarmament.
There weren't any, even the Administration has admitted so. Didn't you get the memo?
You'd better re-read that memo. The only thing that the Administration has admitted is that the prewar intelligence was flawed, which is why the President commissioned The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Administration has never "admitted" that the justifications for going to war were invalid, because they certainly were not.
Lying about a blowjob is impeachable, but lying the country into war and blatantly violating the consitution is not? The hypocracy of the GOP knows no bounds.
If you will note my grandparent post, I don't think that Bill Clintons perjury offense was impeachable either. But at least his offense was real, not a made up, I-don't-like-the-person-in-charge fantasy. Like I said before, the Constitution provides for impeachment in the case of "high crimes and misdemeanors", not for political revenge.
Problem: there hasn't been anything of the kind.
Problem: you have no authority to speak on that issue, only Congress and the courts do. And, well, they haven't finished speaking yet.
Um, no. SCOTUS already ruled in Hamdan that the AUMF was not a blank check for the administration. End of story.
Nonsense. SCOTUS ruled in Hamdan that the AUMF didn't change article 21 of the UCMJ. End of story. The AUMF clearly did give the President authority "to use all necessary and appropriate force" to prevent further terrorist attacks, and SCOTUS ruled in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that AUMF gave the President authority to conduct anything that was a "fundamental incident of waging war", which intelligence gathering clearly is.
Complete, unadulterated horseshit. The government was already able to spy on susptected terrorists to their hearts content under FISA. As other posters have pointed out, thousands of FISA warrants have been issued since 1978, and only four have been denied.
So what? This information immaterial to this claim or this issue. This discussion about what authority the President has been given to prevent further terrorist attacks, not about how many warrants have been issued since 1978.
And, if they were actually serious about protecting Americans from terrorism, they'd do something about security for ports and chemical plants.
Nice red herring. And I would argue that you don't have the slightest clue what "they" are doing about security for ports and chemical plants.
And as far as "testing the limits of power", that's something they need to do with the legislative branch and have it sorted out by the courts, a la the PATRIOT act. Not act in secret, ousid
Indeed. A lesson that many left wingers need to learn. By the way they talk, it seems they believe that saying the Iraq war is "illegal", that there were no WMD's, and that Bush has committed an impeachable offense will make those falsehoods true.
And those "detailed legal justifications" are a load of bullshit.
Like it or not, the FISA act did give an avenue for warrant less wiretaps if they were provided for by statute. You may disagree with the administrations claim that the September 2001 Joint Resolution is such a statute, but that hardly is the final say on whether these detailed legal justifications are wrong. As I said before, this matter will be debated and appealed in the courts for years to come.
The best case for the administration is for the courts to side with their appeal and rule their actions as justified by law. The worst case for the administration (and the country, IMO), is for the case to reach the USSC and it be ruled as unjustified. In that case, the wiretaps stop and the country loses an important tool to fight terrorism. Hardly a case for impeachment, as you claim.
You're right: testing the limits is not illegal. However, going beyond them is, and that's what this administration has done!
Once again, you are exceedingly premature in your assessment. Your partisan bone to pick aside, this matter can only, and will only be settled in the courts.
Hardly! The only reason why things work relatively well in this country is that the limits are well and rigidly defined. In fact, I would say that it's wrong for the government to want to test the limits! "Power corrupts" axiom aside, the real job of our government is to minimize itself.
I disagree. The founding fathers didn't include checks and balances into our Government because they thought that everybody would play nicely within well and rigidly defined roles. They added checks and balances because people and governments have always, and will always test the limits of their power. This isn't new, and it isn't unique to the current administration or government. The judicial branch is always trying to usurp authority from the legislative branch, the executive branch is always trying to usurp authority from the judicial branch, and the legislative branch is always trying to usurp authority from the executive branch. It is up to the other 2 branches of the government to ensure that these powers remain in balance, and that is exactly what is happening in this case. This is a good thing. One branch rolling over and playing dead while the other two branches encroach on their authority is a bad thing.
I'm well aware of that. However, ignoring FISA, the Geneva Convention, and myriad other laws is.
Notwithstanding today's ruling, which will surely be debated for years to come on appeal, Bush is certainly not guilty of any of this. This administration has provided detailed legal justifications of the actions they have taken, and now it is up to the other branches of the Government to balance it out. The only thing the administration are guilty of is testing the limits of their executive power, which is hardly new and hardly illegal. All three branches of the government have been testing the limits of their power since the inception of this government, which is on of the reasons why things work so well in this country.
That's what Bush needs to be impeached (and then prosecuted in the US, and then prosecuted in international court) for!
Well, no. The Constitution provides for the articles of impeachment in the case of "high crimes and misdemeanors", not for political revenge. The only Constitutionally approved process of removing an elected official from office who endorses policies that you disagree with is to vote them out in the next election, which you might be glad to know won't even be necessary in 2008.
For the record, I have misgivings about what the Republicans did to Clinton in 1998. While lying under oath is clearly illegal, I'm not sure if it classifies as an "impeachable offense".
This makes no sense. Forged documents wouldn't help them at all, and could (as it turns out, did) hurt them a lot.
Huh? Forged documents would most certainly have helped the Democrats if people didn't know they were forged, which is pretty much the whole point of forging a document in the first place. Your theory also assumes that CBS News, Dan Rather, Mary Mapes, Bill Burket, and the independent experts who "thoroughly vetted" the memos for CBS and declared them authentic were all willing to destroy their reputation and career as willing participants in this scheme.
Nothing in the memos was new, it had (as you point out) all been in the news for years.
I didn't say that it had been in the news for years, I said that the Democrats had been trying to attack him on it for years. Wow, weren't they lucky to stumble across some documents less than 2 months before the election "proving" what they had been claiming for years?
Now I'd be the first to admit that there are some dim bulbs in the Democratic leadership, but your theory requires them to be clever and stupid at the same time. The Rove theory only require that the perpetrators be clever.
No, my theory requires the Democratic leadership to be both stupid and desperate, which anybody paying attention to the political scene over the last 6 years should realize isn't a stretch. The Rove theory requires him to be both clever and extremely lucky that it didn't backfire.
Please produce a citation to support this. Find me one example where Bush denied the actual claims (and not some plausible sounding non-denial). For that matter, if he was so trying so hard to prove that he had fulfilled his obligation, why couldn't he scrape up anybody that remembered seeing him on base?
When the Democrats tried to make a story out of it again in 2004, Bush had Lieutenant Colonel Albert Lloyd release his payroll records, which clearly showed that he had fulfilled his required 50 points per year for every year he was in service. Lloyd stated that "This clearly shows that 1LT George Bush has satisfactory years for both 72-73 and 73-74 which proves that he completed his military obligation in a satisfactory manner."
By the way, Lt. Col. Bill Calhoun was one of the soldiers who came forward testifying that Bush was present in Alabama.
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That's it? That's the best you could come up with?
Unfortunately for you, "nuh-uh" isn't a very convincing argument.
The issue isn't whether or not a war has formally been declared by Congress, it is whether or not the President has been granted wartime powers from Congress. There hasn't been a formal declaration of war from Congress since World War II, but Congress has given the President wartime powers several times since then. The 1973 War Powers resolution specifically gives the President special wartime powers if Congress approves, and the 2001 AUMF was clearly such an approval.
And the SCOTUS ruled in Hamdi that intelligence gathering is a valid use of Presidential wartime powers.
No, the war on terrorism has already eliminated the two largest state sponsors of terror, and over 70% of the senior leadership of the worlds largest terror organization. Any comparison to the so-called "war on drugs" is a red herring.
Do you think that writing in bold caps makes it true? There is no question that Saddam Hussein supported terrorists, and any argument to the contrary flies in the face of 25 years of prior history in Iraq. Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism - period. Any "war on terror" that did not include the largest and most defiant state sponsor of terror would have been incomplete - period. Any argument to the contrary is made in complete ignorance.
Your argument displays a fundamental misunderstanding of what the war on terror is actually about. It isn't a fight against "those guys how attacked us on 9/11", and it isn't the "war on Al Qaeda". It is the war on terror, and is designed to eliminate the threat of global terrorism, regardless of their relationship with the 9/11 attacks.
Every justification that has been used to support the war in Iraq has since been validated by independant reviews. You may not agree with those justifications, but that hardly invalidates them.
And I would say that your argument for impeachment is far more unconstitutional than any of the alleged "violations" of the current administration. Impeachment is not provided for in the case of political disagreements or revenge -- that is what elections are for. It is provided for in the case of high crimes and misdemeanors, which so far is only a wet dream fantasy of some of the President's most rabid opposition.
Well, first of all, I said that Iraq was one of the largest state sponsors of terror, not one of the largest state sponsors of Al Qaeda. If you haven't seen a "shred of proof" about this, I have no idea where you were looking. Iraq was on the State Department's "State Sponsors of Terrorism" list for the better part of two decades. Iraq and Hussein provided open support for many internationally recognized terrorist organizations, including Abu Nadal, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, Carlos the Jackal, PKK, Ansar al-Islam, and Hamas to name a few. The Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) was also implicated in several terrorism plots, including the attempted bombing of a radio tower in Prague, and the attempted assassination of a former US President. This is why the legislature passed a resolution in 1998 stating that "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime", which happens to be exactly what George Bush is doing right now.
However, there are still concrete links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The Clinton State Department issued an Indictment of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden in 1998, charging that "al Qaeda reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq". This came after Saddam Hussein offered political asylum to Bin Laden after he was expelled from Saudi Arabia and left Afghanistan.
Not to mention the fact that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other Al Qaeda fighters were allowed to set up and operate Ansar al-Islam within Iraqi borders following Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in December 2001, and that Mohammed Atta had allegedly met with ISS officials in Prague in April 2001.
Congress did give the President all wartime powers on September 18th 2001 when they authorized him to use "all necessary force
That is some twisted logic. I would say that always having people plotting acts of terror against us to cause us harm is an argument for, not against, a war on terrorism.
The war in Iraq is a critical part on the war of terror because you can't fight terrorism while ignoring one of the largest state sponsors of terror. But the war on terror is also being "fought" on many different fronts, including intelligence, front-line defense, strategic allies, detention, etc. These are some of the reasons why we haven't had a terrorist attack on the US for 5 years.
What protections are being thrown out? The judicial branch is reviewing these programs, and the legislative branch is voting on new legal provisions for or against them. This is exactly how the founding fathers designed our Government to work.
You have a typo. You typed "openly" when you meant to type "allegedly", and considering where that allegation came from it's surprising that people still toss it around as though it is fact.
And that happened 85% of the House and 100% of the (Democrat Controlled) Senate who voted for the bill in early 2002.
I disagree. The whole point of a representative Republic is to have elected representatives that reflect the views of the people who elected them. That clearly was not the case in Texas prior to the 2003 redistricting.
Actually, no. The 2003 redistricting plan corrected the disenfranchisement of the majority of Texas voters. 56% of Texas voters had voted for Republican representation in the house, but the Democrats still had a two seat congressional advantage for Texas because of poor districting lines. The redistricting plan fixed that problem.
Wrong. Congressional redistricting isn't "messing" with the election process, it is part of the election process. SCOTUS confirmed this two months ago.
I can only assume that you actually meant "allegedly" when you typed "demonstrably" because nobody has demonstrated anything about the election process being "messed" with by the Republican party. There sure have been plenty of baseless allegations, though.
Wrong. I'm not sure what you mean by "quadrupled the size of government", but that is completely false under any reasonable definition of the size of government. In 1980, the year before Reagan's policies took effect, government expenditures equaled 21.7% of GDP. In 1989, which was the last year of the Reagan/Bush policies before raising taxes, government expenditures were 21.2% of GDP. And deficit spending during the Reagan years was nowhere near some of the extreme deficits seen in the past 100 years. In fact, the 8 year average annual deficit between 1981 and 1989 was only 1% higher than the average annual deficit for the entire 20th century.
The economic slowdown of the early 1990's came after the Reagan economic policies had been abandoned by George HW Bush and the Democratic legislature. You will note that taxes were raised, including a 10% raise in the top marginal rate, in Q3 of 1990, and the first quarter of negative GDP growth immediately followed in Q4 of 1990.
The 1982 recession was an intentional move by Reagan and Volcker to get us out of the mess caused by Carter's incompetence. Intentionally tightening the money supply eliminated inflation, and the tax cuts spurred the second longest period of economic expansion in the past century.
And the last 3 years have seen an average quarterly GDP growth of almost 4%. It is laughable that you could consider this the "seeds" of a recession.
Wrong again. Salary and wage trends are reported every month in the BLS employment situation summary, and they clearly show that wages are outpacing inflation over the past 5 years. And the median real family income for all income groups saw significant rises throughout the 8 Reagan years. You really can't keep making this stuff up.
1. Read the 17 unanimously passed UN resolutions not only authorizing but requiring the use of military force to ensure compliance
2. Re-read your sentence and
3. Realize that you're full of it.
I'd say that animosity against the US in the Arab street was pretty strong in 1979 when Arabs stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and took 66 people hostage. That certainly wasn't George W. Bush's fault.
So you equate open support for Israel with "arrogance"?
Only a great fool would believe that Iran does not intent to develop nuclear weapons with thir nuclear program, especially considering that Russia has offered them as much enriched Uranium as they want for energy generation, and they are already sitting on one of the largest energy reserves in the world.
Russia and China both voted to authorize military action against Iraq, why would it be any different with Iran if they posed a similar threat with WMD's?
I don't know how you can even begin to try and back that statement up. Did the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor because they loved us? Did the Soviet Union put missiles in Cuba because they loved us? Did Hezbollah bomb the Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983 because they loved us? Did Bin Ladin blow up the US embassies in Africa, blow up the USS Cole, and use hijacked planes as missiles to crash into populated areas because he loved us? How are things any different today?
It wasn't "blatantly arrogant" to rebel against the government who brought us here? It wasn't "blatantly arrogant" to throw their tea in a harbor and right a war against them? It wasn't "blatantly arrogant" to claim a "manifest destiny" of spreading our freedoms and form of Government across the globe? Once again, how are things any different today?
No, we get juicy trade agreements because we are the richest and the strongest, and people cannot afford to ignore us. We have the balls to affect changes in the world that directly benefit us and others. That is what makes us so great.
What?
How so? The UN as well as the majority of the western world agrees with us that Iran has no business developing nuclear technology. Any attack on Iran would come with the support of the international community, and would come after all other diplomatic options had been exhausted.
So it is "unfair" to attribute Carter's incompetance to the inflation and stagnation of the late 1970's, but it is entirely accurate to blame George W. Bush for the stagnate economy between 2001 and 2003, right? Keep in mind that the first quarter of GDP contraction came well over a year before Bush's first budget was in effect.
Wow. Average annual GDP growth of over 8% qualifies as "tanking the economy"? Rising real family median incomes across all income groups qualifies as "tanking the economy"? Taking interest rates from historically high levels to low levels while at the same time reducing double-digit inflation qualifies at "tanking the ecnomoy"? If that is the case, I sure hope that the economy "tanks" every year!
By the way, national debt is not out of control. The Reagan deficits of 4-6% of GDP were well within historical norms, and the current federal debt level of 64% of GDP is right in line with where it should be and less than half of what other industrialized countries have.
Wrong. The rich don't get their wealth by hording luxury items. They get their wealth by contributing to a growing economy, and the more incentive they have to help grow the economy, the better off everybody is. This is why supply side economics work so well.
Are you under the mistaken impression that everybody liked us before Bush was elected?
Ah, revisionist history at it's finest. I highly recommend that you look up what inflation rates really were during the 1970's. They spiked in 1974 at 11.1%, but had dropped over 50% by the time Carter was elected, only to spike back up into the double digits for the remainder of his presidency. Carter's disastrous appointment of William Miller to the FED made a bad situation much worse, and his "solution" to that problem was to fire his Treasury Secretary and appoint Miller in his stead. He was then basically forced to appoint Volcker, but he kept a very tight reign on the FED's interest rate policies. It wasn't until the results of the 1980 election were apparent that Volcker's hand was freed, and he then worked with Reagan to orchestrate a recession in 1981 and 1982 to eliminate the stagnation and spark growth.
It's true that Carter didn't actually raise taxes very much. Thanks to rate creep, the nationwide tax burden was already at near historic levels. Reagan pushed through one of the largest tax cuts in history, and the Democratic legislature only managed to chip away or delay the phasing in of those tax cuts. The 1983 Social Security "solution" was the only significant tax increase during the Reagan years, but the cut in income taxes more than offset this increase.
You have GOT to be kidding, right? The US Military was a pathetic joke during the Carter years. Carter's failed "support" of the Shah during the Iranian Revolution was sickening. He kept promising full support but only figured out how to send a carrier to float around in circles in the Indian ocean before ordering it back. His pathetic response to the hostage situation gave rise to modern Islamic terrorism. An overwhelming, Operation Enduring Freedom-type response to the Islamic theocracy and hostage crisis would have changed the dynamic of the region for good. Instead, we couldn't even land a helicopter without killing our own men. Khomeini himself even said that this emboldened his movement and allowed him to expand his rhetoric. The rest of Carter's military "strengthenging" was in reality complete incompetence and indecisiveness, such as proposing and then scrapping a program to land airplanes inside a stadium. This problem was certainly not fixed until Reagan took office.
Carter's real problem was that he stuttered and stammered in the face of real and serious problems. You simply can't put an a sweater for TV and
No, the root of the Iranian revolution was the fact that the Carter administration kept promising the Shah that the US fully backed him, but only managed to send an aircraft carrier to float in circles across the Indian Ocean and then turn back without helping a bit. Had Carter been able to provide any kind of tactical support to the Shah, we would not have seen the rise of a militant Islamic theocracy and the complete destabilization of the region.
Not to mention the spectacle that he called "Operation Eagle Claw", which turned out to be one of the most embarrassing military "missions" we have ever suffered through because of his incompetence. If you want to talk about our "national credibility", there is a shining example of how we can embolden our enemies while making ourselves look like complete idiots at the same time. No wonder Islamic terrorists started attacking American interests after that -- we couldn't even land a helicoptor without taking some of our own men out.
No, 99.9999% of the reason we had an economic crisis in the 1970's was because Carter failed to offer any real solution to the problem other than some philosophical "We need more confidence" garbage. His disastrous appointment of William Miller to the FED made a bad situation much worse, and his "solution" to that problem was to fire his Treasury Secretary and appoint Miller in his stead. His reluctance to then appoint Volcker to the FED, and his subsequent tight-handed control over Volcker only managed to create another recession without any relief from stagflation. It wasn't until Carter lost and Volcker's hand was freed that any real economic relief came. Other than putting on a sweater, what did he do to stop inflation, reduce energy dependency, and lower unemployment? You'll probably have to think pretty hard on that one.
No, the world remains in this "idiotic" situation because energy is one of the most fundamental resources required for an advanced civilization to operate, and no matter how much we try, we need it in order to function. Blaming conservatives for this is quite puzzling because they are not the ones fighting to block every effort to fully utilize our own energy resources because Bambi might have to look at an oil rig that is 50 miles away.
By the way, energy efficiency is the highest it's ever been in history, and CAFE ratings have been raised to their highest level ever under Bush. So much for your "lowering efficiency" claim.
Wow. Congratulations. You managed to work in a meaningless cliche on the first line of your post!
Yup, better put that aside, because according to UNSEC #687, this war was not only justified, but required under international law.
Well that would have been silly because it has never been demonstrated that "Saddam had no WMD's". On the contrary, the ISG concluded that Iraq was most certainly in violation of the UN requirements regarding WMD disarmament.
You'd better re-read that memo. The only thing that the Administration has admitted is that the prewar intelligence was flawed, which is why the President commissioned The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Administration has never "admitted" that the justifications for going to war were invalid, because they certainly were not.
If you will note my grandparent post, I don't think that Bill Clintons perjury offense was impeachable either. But at least his offense was real, not a made up, I-don't-like-the-person-in-charge fantasy. Like I said before, the Constitution provides for impeachment in the case of "high crimes and misdemeanors", not for political revenge.
Problem: you have no authority to speak on that issue, only Congress and the courts do. And, well, they haven't finished speaking yet.
Nonsense. SCOTUS ruled in Hamdan that the AUMF didn't change article 21 of the UCMJ. End of story. The AUMF clearly did give the President authority "to use all necessary and appropriate force" to prevent further terrorist attacks, and SCOTUS ruled in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that AUMF gave the President authority to conduct anything that was a "fundamental incident of waging war", which intelligence gathering clearly is.
So what? This information immaterial to this claim or this issue. This discussion about what authority the President has been given to prevent further terrorist attacks, not about how many warrants have been issued since 1978.
Nice red herring. And I would argue that you don't have the slightest clue what "they" are doing about security for ports and chemical plants.
Indeed. A lesson that many left wingers need to learn. By the way they talk, it seems they believe that saying the Iraq war is "illegal", that there were no WMD's, and that Bush has committed an impeachable offense will make those falsehoods true.
Like it or not, the FISA act did give an avenue for warrant less wiretaps if they were provided for by statute. You may disagree with the administrations claim that the September 2001 Joint Resolution is such a statute, but that hardly is the final say on whether these detailed legal justifications are wrong. As I said before, this matter will be debated and appealed in the courts for years to come.
The best case for the administration is for the courts to side with their appeal and rule their actions as justified by law. The worst case for the administration (and the country, IMO), is for the case to reach the USSC and it be ruled as unjustified. In that case, the wiretaps stop and the country loses an important tool to fight terrorism. Hardly a case for impeachment, as you claim.
Once again, you are exceedingly premature in your assessment. Your partisan bone to pick aside, this matter can only, and will only be settled in the courts.
I disagree. The founding fathers didn't include checks and balances into our Government because they thought that everybody would play nicely within well and rigidly defined roles. They added checks and balances because people and governments have always, and will always test the limits of their power. This isn't new, and it isn't unique to the current administration or government. The judicial branch is always trying to usurp authority from the legislative branch, the executive branch is always trying to usurp authority from the judicial branch, and the legislative branch is always trying to usurp authority from the executive branch. It is up to the other 2 branches of the government to ensure that these powers remain in balance, and that is exactly what is happening in this case. This is a good thing. One branch rolling over and playing dead while the other two branches encroach on their authority is a bad thing.
Notwithstanding today's ruling, which will surely be debated for years to come on appeal, Bush is certainly not guilty of any of this. This administration has provided detailed legal justifications of the actions they have taken, and now it is up to the other branches of the Government to balance it out. The only thing the administration are guilty of is testing the limits of their executive power, which is hardly new and hardly illegal. All three branches of the government have been testing the limits of their power since the inception of this government, which is on of the reasons why things work so well in this country.
Well, no. The Constitution provides for the articles of impeachment in the case of "high crimes and misdemeanors", not for political revenge. The only Constitutionally approved process of removing an elected official from office who endorses policies that you disagree with is to vote them out in the next election, which you might be glad to know won't even be necessary in 2008.
For the record, I have misgivings about what the Republicans did to Clinton in 1998. While lying under oath is clearly illegal, I'm not sure if it classifies as an "impeachable offense".
I hate to break it to you, but disagreeing with you politically isn't a "crime".
Huh? Forged documents would most certainly have helped the Democrats if people didn't know they were forged, which is pretty much the whole point of forging a document in the first place. Your theory also assumes that CBS News, Dan Rather, Mary Mapes, Bill Burket, and the independent experts who "thoroughly vetted" the memos for CBS and declared them authentic were all willing to destroy their reputation and career as willing participants in this scheme.
I didn't say that it had been in the news for years, I said that the Democrats had been trying to attack him on it for years. Wow, weren't they lucky to stumble across some documents less than 2 months before the election "proving" what they had been claiming for years?
No, my theory requires the Democratic leadership to be both stupid and desperate, which anybody paying attention to the political scene over the last 6 years should realize isn't a stretch. The Rove theory requires him to be both clever and extremely lucky that it didn't backfire.
When the Democrats tried to make a story out of it again in 2004, Bush had Lieutenant Colonel Albert Lloyd release his payroll records, which clearly showed that he had fulfilled his required 50 points per year for every year he was in service. Lloyd stated that "This clearly shows that 1LT George Bush has satisfactory years for both 72-73 and 73-74 which proves that he completed his military obligation in a satisfactory manner."
By the way, Lt. Col. Bill Calhoun was one of the soldiers who came forward testifying that Bush was present in Alabama.