4/24/2009

Obamateur Hour


Andrew McCarthy has written a great article on National Review Online about the interrogation memo fiasco.

Among the many hypocrisies of this mess are the fact that Attorney General Eric Holder stated back in 2002 that enemy combatants in the War on Terror were not subject to the Geneva Convention:

"It seems to me that given the way in which they have conducted themselves, however, that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war. If, for instance, Mohamed Atta had survived the attack on the World Trade Center, would we now be calling him a prisoner of war? I think not. Should Zacarias Moussaoui be called a prisoner of war? Again, I think not."

Further, last week Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair wrote a memo to his staff in which he stated the following: "High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country....I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past, but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given." These comments, however, were redacted from the version of the memo that was released to the media.

In an effort to placate the Hard Left, Obama has raised a firestorm that will not subside soon. Does he continue this charade and engage in, as Andrew McCarthy describes it, a banana republic like investigation of his political rivals? Or will he show the fortitude to stand up to Patrick Leahy, George Soros, Moveon.Org, et. al. and choose the honorable alternative?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Obama placating the 'Hard Left'? I do not see that happening. Obama lurched hard right on November 5th, and he hasn't stopped.

Steven L. Baerson said...

Wow, "lurched hard right"? I'd hate to see what would have happened if he had stayed true to his liberal beliefs.

Anonymous said...

Well, I don't think Obama is all that liberal. He kept Gates as Secretary of Defense. The most liberal member of his NS team is Hilary Clinton, who is a) not that liberal, and b) probably getting her choice of jobs for not sitting on her hands in the campaign. Geithner and Summers are not particularly liberal, and they are continuing the Paulson policies of crony capitalism.

As for what a real liberal would have done, suppose his economic team was Paul Krugman and Barney Frank? Suppose he submitted a budget with a 25% cut in defense like Frank recommended? Suppose he introduced single payer health care? Suppose he got tough with Goldman Sachs/AIG?

Obama played up the liberal aspects of his policies to keep from losing core Democrats, but that is not how he has governed so far.

Sammy Sosa said...

It is obvious that Obama's lurching back on forth on the issue of political prosecutions reflects his desire to placate the hard left. Could Obama have lurched harder left? Sure, but he knows it would cost him politically and potentially jeopardize his re-election -- and the one subject on which no one can deny Obama’s expertise is knowing where his own political advantage lies, given that his singular accomplishment in life has been negotiating his own political advancement. Regardless of the exact measure of Obama’s genuflection to the hard left, what is most disturbing, and condemnable, is his revival of the brand of governing properly known as Liberal Fascism – a massive increase in the size of government, the state takeover of major corporations (witness the Treasury Dept.’s refusal to accept TARP loan repayments), exalting the secular over the religious, and criminalizing political dissent (look no further than the Napolitano DHS report or threats of partisan witch-hunts) – all right out of Benito’s playbook. By the way, how’s that promise to “bring us all together” working out so far?

The Conservative Soldier said...

That bowling ball in the photo obviously is heading for the gutter, where it surely will encounter the sources of BHO's policies and ideologies, and perhaps even several relatives he continues to ignore.

Anonymous said...

http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick04272009.html

The reason why foreign fighters joined al-Qa'ida in Iraq was overwhelmingly because of abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and not Islamic ideology," says Major Matthew Alexander, who personally conducted 300 interrogations of prisoners in Iraq. It was the team led by Major Alexander [a named assumed for security reasons] that obtained the information that led to the US military being able to locate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qa'ida in Iraq