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| Fauxbamessiah to put Bush administration officials on trial for war crimes |
| 2008-06-09 |
| Which he kind of has to, I suppose, given that a messiah's job is to drive Satan out of the body politic: Barack Obama's plan for imposing unity on the nation after he takes office apparently entails a close look at war crimes trials for Bush administration officials. He has even said so in an interview with Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News. This kind of change -- putting your predecessors on trial for their conduct of policy -- may not be what most Americans really want or expect from someone with Obama's gauzy rhetoric of unity. But unity has a dark side in the hands of people who regard their opponents as criminals. America has two centuries-plus of history lacking the totalitarian practice of jailing the predecessors when a new president takes office. This is the sort of proposal one might expect from a man steeped in Marxism at his church, from his friends like Ayers, and as a member of the Alinsky Left. But I am surprised he let this slip. Few on the right noticed and became alarmed, as the interview in question appeared on a Philadelphia Daily News blog, Obama said that as president he would indeed ask his new Attorney General and his deputies to "immediately review the information that's already there" and determine if an inquiry is warranted -- but he also tread carefully on the issue, in line with his reputation for seeking to bridge the partisan divide. He worried that such a probe could be spun as "a partisan witch hunt." However, he said that equation changes if there was willful criminality, because "nobody is above the law." At the time it was picked up only by the Huffington Post. To me the terribly frightening phrase is the wish to avoid a "partisan witch hunt." When a Harvard-trained lawyer inserts a qualifier into a phrase, that is a signal of wiggle room being created. In this case, the obvious implication is that if you get Chuck Hagel or some other antiwar Republican on board, then you have cover for your "witch hunt." Today Mark Ambinder addresses the issue at the Atlantic blog, while at Little Green Footballs there is the discovery of a campaign document mentioning the intention to: Here is Obama's answer to Bunch's question on the possibility of war crimes trials, in its entirety: What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that's already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can't prejudge that because we don't have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve. So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment -- I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General -- having pursued, having looked at what's out there right now -- are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it's important-- one of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing between really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I've said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law -- and I think that's roughly how I would look at it. Bunch points out that some interpret discussions of waterboarding by officials as grounds for launching a probe. |
| Posted by:Zhang Fei |
| #14 Torches and pitchforks, soon. No my friend, I believe it will come to more than that. There is a whole class of people that will need to be removed from society, by whatever means. Then there are legions that will need to be re-educated. Personally, I cannot understand why there isn't some clandestine organization that hasn't engaged in targeted assassinations of the upper echelons and money people of our enemies. Think Soros and the sort. |
| Posted by: One Eyed Ulese1266 2008-06-09 22:43 |
| #13 The Dems (not all of them moonbats) have wanted to criminalize their political opponents ever since the impeachment of the Slickster. I have had a number of conversations with reasonably sane people who advocate this, so Obambi is not far outside the mainstream of the Democrat party. Clinton statrted the process with harrassing IRS audits. This is just the next logical step. We are approaching a crossroads in this country. |
| Posted by: SR-71 2008-06-09 22:19 |
| #12 The "unity" Obamessiah wants is that of the mindless collective run by the elites and disciplined by the jackboot. He is a walking disaster and beholden to the most fascist part of the leftists in the US. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-06-09 17:47 |
| #11 There's two possibilities here, neither of which is good: 1. He really means it, in which case he's a barking moonbat. 2. He's just saying it to win over the raging anti-American, anti-Semitic crazies that make up his party's left wing, and doesn't have any intention of following through. That makes him saner than option #1 above, but also disturbingly dishonest. |
| Posted by: Mike 2008-06-09 17:22 |
| #10 Let's try that again, here. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2008-06-09 17:01 |
#9 Yes they do. See
| #8 Do they still teach Constitutional Law at Harvard? It really doesn't seem like they do .... |
Posted by: AzCat
2008-06-09 16:40
| |
| #7 AlanC, Go to google. Cut and past the quote: "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." You will get 58,100 links to page 261 of "Audacity of Hope" by Barak Obama. |
| Posted by: Kufr al-juhud 2008-06-09 16:30 |
| #6 AlanC, try this |
| Posted by: Kufr al-juhud 2008-06-09 16:24 |
| #5 KaJ: I'm not gonna read that whole piece of crap, you got a cite? |
| Posted by: AlanC 2008-06-09 16:09 |
| #4 Torches and pitchforks, soon. |
| Posted by: SR-71 2008-06-09 15:51 |
| #3 Osama-Obama has a martyr wish? |
| Posted by: wtf? 2008-06-09 15:20 |
| #2 "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." Audacity of Hope (2006) by Barack Obama |
| Posted by: Kufr al-juhud 2008-06-09 15:14 |
| #1 This is the least a Muslim could do for the cause of Islam. |
| Posted by: Kufr al-juhud 2008-06-09 14:53 |