Once again, President Obama is backing policy from the Bush administration. The AP reported on friday, “The Obama administration, siding with the Bush White House, contended Friday that detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights.”
The exact quote from the Barack Obama-era Department of Justice? “Having considered the matter, the government adheres to its previously articulated position.” The DoJ and the DoD consider Bagram detainees “unlawful combatants” without any rights to access the US court system and with no recourse for release.
Just as it did in the George Bush administration. Remember how the Left considered Bush a war criminal for taking this exact position? I’d like to see how they square the circle with Obama now. A few like Glenn Greenwald will rip Obama on principle, but the rest will suddenly discover the reasonableness of detaining terrorists and treating them not like burglars but like enemy combatants who have themselves violated Geneva Conventions through their terrorism.
Just as we did in the George Bush administration.
All statements from Barack Obama come with expiration dates. That’s something that the HopeandChangizoids have begun to learn just a month after the dawning of the Age of Obama. A lot of them owe Bush — and us — apologies.
It’s amusing to read the reaction of Obama’s followers over at the DU. It’s as if their world is coming to an end.
This story has been building momentom for sometime now. Matt Drudge however is reporting the Washington Times is about to break this story wide open tomorrow. Matt’s tease:
WASH TIMES Friday: Obama secretly tried to sway Iraqi government to ignore Bush deal on keeping troops in Iraq… Developing..
Ed Morrissey covered this story last month when it first happened, saying:
“Hoshyar Zebari didn’t hide behind a “high-level source in Baghdad” tag for this story. Zebari’s testimony puts the onus on Obama to explain why he attempted to interfere with the Bush administration’s negotiations despite his having absolutely no authority to do so. If Obama wants to negotiate a defeat for America, he needs to wait until Americans elect him to the White House before betraying our allies and our troops in the field.”
This could be a real bad for the Obama campaign…
New York Post – OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS’ IRAQ WITHDRAWAL
Obama tried to sway Iraqis on Bush deal
In private conversations on troop presence, candidate pitched delay
EXCLUSIVE:
At the same time the Bush administration was negotiating a still elusive agreement to keep the U.S. military in Iraq, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to convince Iraqi leaders in private conversations that the president shouldn’t be allowed to enact the deal without congressional approval.
Mr. Obama’s conversations with the Iraqi leaders, confirmed to The Washington Times by his campaign aides, began just two weeks after he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in June and stirred controversy over the appropriateness of a White House candidate’s contacts with foreign governments while the sitting president is conducting a war.
Some of the specifics of the conversations remain the subject of dispute. Iraqi leaders purported to The Times that Mr. Obama urged Baghdad to delay an agreement with Mr. Bush until next year when a new president will be in office – a charge the Democratic campaign denies.
Reports are Team Obama will be holding a “major” event in Indiana this saturday. A hint that Senator Obama has picked Evan Bayh to be his Vice President?
If this is the case, Evan Bayh was standing right next to President Bush and Senator John McCain in regards to the war in Iraq. Obama always brings him his stand against the war as a key distinction between him and Senator McCain. If this judgement disqualifies Senator McCain from the Oval Office, why not Senator Bayh?
“There’s a routine now whenever some unspeakable act of aggression is visited upon us or our allies by murderous fanatics or authoritarian regimes. While the enemy takes a victory lap, we compete in a shameful medley relay of apologetics, defeatism and surrender. The initial reaction is almost always self-blame and an expression of sympathetic explanation for the aggressor’s actions.” – Gerard Baker
Gerard Baker has a wonderful piece written today on Times Online. Check it out.
There was a great article written in the Wall Street Journal by Andrew Klavan. For anyone who has seen the Dark Knight, the comparisons between Batman and President Bush become clear from his article.
There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.
And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society — in which people sometimes make the wrong choices — and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.
“The Dark Knight,” then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year’s “300,” “The Dark Knight” is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.
Unfortunately, I was given Vincent Bugliosi new book “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.” I appreciate the gift, but the book was so seriously flawed I am shocked someone actually published it. The editor obviously has the same hateful agenda the author does. Bugliosi freely admits in the introduction having trouble finding someone to print his propaganda.
This man has an axe to grind, he’s a far left liberal, who has been whining since the 2000 election. He claims to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that President Bush should be tried for murder. However like many liberals he has very selective reasoning and memory. I’m sure he has no plans to write a book about President Clinton, who attacked Iraq in 1998 to distract the country from his sex scandal (resulting in the death of 600-2000 Iraqis).
He spends much time praising himself and telling his readers about how smart he is. He claims so see things no one else does and thus we need someone wise and sagacious like himself to bring this information to us. And if a newspaper has ever said anything positive about Bugliosi you bet he will spend much time repeating them verbatim in his books, interviews and talk show.
It’s also hypocritical or him not to want to prosecute every member of congress who voted for the Iraq Resolution. Like every other left wing nut case, he is hung up on not finding Weapons of Mass Destruction. They never existed, he reasons because President Bush made them up so he could attack Iraq. This is lazy and inexcusable nonsense. The video below will show you many notable democrats, including President Bill Clinton clearly say he believed Saddam had WMDs. President Bush was not alone and to say he was is ignorant and takes a revisionist view of history.
And by popular demand, I will look at each chapter of the book and expose this garbage for what is truly is.
Part 1; Chapter 1 – Open Up Ones Eyes
Bugliosi is basically trying to brainwash the reader away from their own common sense. He says we have to get past the notions that a sitting president can be prosecuted or commit a criminal crime. He says if you think this way, then you won’t believe his “common sense” evidence. This is his version of jury selection, however it doesn’t work that way in books. Anyone can read what he writes and see his moronic theories and judge them for what they are. So no, we won’t go away and stop reading just because we believe that is might just be irresponsible to try a president for murder because soldiers died serving a mission ordered by the Commander in Chief. Just think of what would happen if Mr. Bugliosi was successful in charging the President with murder. Every siting president in the future would have to consider this before they made any national security decisions. It’s so idiotic, it’s almost not even worth talking about because it will never happen. But here we are…
All Mr. Bugliosi is doing is trying to be sensational and sell books. It’s already the first chapter and he has already mentioned four of his other books many, many times.
He claims he is the only one who believed the D.A. office screwed up the O.J. Simspon case. Yeah okay, no one had figured that out until his OJ book came out. Give me a break. Most americans knew that cased was screwed during the trial when the made the Juice try on the glove (over a rubber glove).
Bugliosi defends Saddam Hussein. He claims Hussein was justified in prosecuting and killing Iraqis who supposedly tried to kill him in the early 1980’s in Dujail, Iraq. Saddam was justified in attacking the village, which lead to deaths of scores and scored of innocent Iraqi men, some as young as 13 years old! His reasoning, if someone tried to kill the President of any other country, and they were found, execution wouldn’t be seen as an unreasonable punishment. He’s shocked and outraged that this “non-crime” is what the Iraqis would use to charge Saddam.
Saddam. Wikipedia documents however, Saddam wasn’t just going after the men who tried to kill him, he wanted to wipe out the entire city, “1,500 people were also incarcerated and tortured, while other residents, many of them women and children, were sent to desert camps. Saddam’s regime destroyed the town and then rebuilt it shortly after. In addition to these punishments, 1,000 square kilometres (250,000 acres) of farmland was destroyed; replanting was only permitted 10 years later. ( The Economist 1982 and Kanan Makiya’s book, Republic of Fear).”
Chapter 2 - Why George Bush went to War
Amazing, Bugliosi actual makes the point that while President Bush Senior and President Clinton both thought Saddam was a “troublesome menace,” they never talked about going to war. Bugliosi says it was only President George W. Bush after his election that we started to hear the drums for war. I’m assuming Bugliosi forget that George Bush senior did actually go to war with Iraq, remember that whole invasion of Kuwait thing in 1990?
And as I mentioned above, President Clinton attacked Iraq in 1998, only to distract the country from his sex scandal and impeachment trial (resulting in the death of 600-2,000 Iraqis). Let’s stop for a moment and just consider Operation Desert Fox. Did Mr. Bugliosi voice any moral outrage at the time toward President Clinton? Luckily, no Americans lost their life in the operation. But many innocent Iraqis died. All to distract the country from the President’s personal problems (of lying under oath and to the american people). This lie didn’t matter because Bugliosi is liberal shrill who praises anyone with a D by their name an attacks anyone with a R. He wrote a book defending Clinton from Paula Jones, this should tell you by itself how trustworthy the man is.
Why did Bush go to war, Bugliosi says, “Whatever his reason, it was not a good reason.” You might as well stop reading the book right now. It doesn’t even matter to Bugliosi why Bush went to war, he has already pre judged it to be faulty. Whatever else the man writes is tainted and again should not be trusted. He’s biased and will spin whatever happens negatively against President Bush.
He reports that President Bush’s primary reason for attacking Iraq was it had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and posed an imminent threat to the United States. And since their were no WMD’s Bush must have lied about them. However as a commenter pointed out, “the independent Robb Silbermann report concluded that Bush did not mislead anyone. Specifically: “We conclude that it was the paucity of intelligence and poor analytical tradecraft, rather than political pressure, that produced the inaccurate pre-war intelligence assessments.” And “the US just removed 550 tons of Yellowcake from Iraq” and “although large swaths of other WMD have not been found, Saddam retained the equipment and knowledge to regenerate his program within months.”
He makes the silly assumption that President Bush was the puppet master with all of the congressmen on strings. Watch the video above, they all make the claim INDEPENDENTLY of President Bush that 1) Saddam HAS WMD 2) He is dangerous 3) He should be removed.
It also pains him to mention (but he does nonetheless) that President Bush also said a reason to go to war was to free the Iraq people from the rule of a dictator and allow them to have free elections. He ignorantly believes Bush mentioned it only in passing as some kind of get out of jail free card. However President Bush kept his word, Saddam was removed, the country was given back to the Iraqi people, and they held free elections. Check, check, check.
In President Bush’s ultimatum to Saddam he tells the people of Iraq, “We will help you to be free … The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.”
He then makes himself look stupid by saying, “Should we have freed the people of Russia from Stalin and lose hundreds and thousands of americans in the process? (I love how he makes up fake causality numbers – only to try and scare the reader – why not say a million Bugliosi, that would be more frightening since you are just making them up anyway) Then only to come home from Russia and then go to free the people of China from Mao? He says, “It’s crazy right?” Well, no it’s not. I know it must be to liberals who actually like Stalin and Mao, but these were horrible men should have been removed from power. And perhaps if we had someone with the courage as President Bush at the time we could have freed those people (since we are speaking hypothetically, that is).
He completely misses the effect of September 11 had on the Bush administration. President Bush never forgot 9/11, like so many others have. He was not going to let anything like that happen again. He was not going to continue the failed diplomacy of the Clinton administration. Iraq was given notice,and over 8 years and he failed to comply. The war in Iraq is the fault of Saddam Hussein and his alone.
He says the people of the country must have all the facts before we go to war. That for the Bush administration to keep anything secret goes against the original “town hall” way of thinking this country was founded on. What did Bugliosi want to have happen? A nationwide vote every time a national security crises happen? A threshold of 51 percent (maybe even 65%) must approve any military action? Hell, why do we even need a president if we are going to live in Bugliosi fantasy world. We elect representatives to make those tough decisions for us (those people who work in the Senate and the House of Representatives).
As hard as it is for Bugliosi to accept America elected George W. Bush to be our president. We chose him with the most important job on the planet. We made that choice freely on our own. Yes, Bugliosi lives in liberal looney land that Bush stole the 2000 election. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12623-2001Nov11.html But in 2004 (after the start if the Iraq war), more then 62,000,000 million Americans reelected him again.
Bugliosi lists pull quotes that Iraq had WMD’s he says while he lists them, to think about four things: 1) These are statements responsible for convincing Americans we should go to war. 2) Without these statements American would have never approved going to war. 3) Because of these statements over 100,000 american soldiers and Iraqis have lost their life. 4) All the statements have been thus proved false. Is it just me or are one and two virtually the same thing. While three may be true, it’s very misleading. A very small percent account for American causality. I know a bigger number makes Bugliosi case seem more significant, but all he is doing is trying to mislead the reader. It reminds of the mainstream media’s obsession with “death counts” during the war. Can you imagine what they would have done during WWII where one battle caused the death of over 100,000 American soldiers? And as to number four, who cares? We know the pre-war intelligence was wrong. We also know that everyone got it wrong, not just George W. Bush. The report mentioned above also shows that Bush never mislead or lied to anyone.
Bugliosi’s Saddam love-in continues - He says Saddam Hussein is more sane then President Bush because he was too busy writing novels then attacking the United States. Bugliosi presents Saddam as a young struggling writer instead of the murderous, dictator that he was.
Part 2; Chapter 3 - Prologue to the Prosecution of George W. Bush for murder
Bugliosi’s asks ”If Bush lied about going to war what should we, as a nation do?” He answers his question, “nothing.” Really Vinny? Probably because he didn’t lie about going to war!
Oh no, Bugliosi rants about Kenneth Star. The hate (and jealously) for him is very clear. He has to get his little left wing dig in at the man who took on his hero, President Clinton. Oh, how Bugliosi probably lays in bad at night dreaming of doing what Star did to Clinton, to President Bush.
He spends sometime talking about Tim, a brave soldiers who lost his life in Iraq. And points out he is not alone, but joined by thousands of other men and women who lost their life in defense of their country. But no, that is not good enough for Bugliosi, He takes that all away and instead of sacrificing their lives as heroes, they are victims of murder at the end of their President. He says each men to died in the war had dreams and Bush saw to it that none of them will come true.
We have no draft. These brave men and women were not held at gun point and told they had to enlist in the army. They did it because they love their country and wanted to help protect it. It’s a tragedy when just one american solider dies. It has been that way since the revolutionary war and it’s that way now. But for the same reason General Washington wasn’t tied for murder, our current Commander in Chief should not be tried either.
He makes the absurd connection that because the President liked to run and ride bikes, it means he doesn’t care about the soldiers.
He believes Bush could careless about the suffering of anyone, let alone his soldiers who die in Iraq. All he does is vacation, play golf and relax. The accusation is so insane, I refuse to address it.
He attacks President Bush for being a Christian. Bush said people need Jesus to go to heaven. Duh! What does Bugliosi think Christian’s believe? He then mocks Oswald Chambers and his book “My Utmost for His Highest,” because Bush reads it. His scorn for Christianity is as deep and real as his scorn for Bush.
President Bush doesn’t loves his country because he was not in the “real” army. He joined the National Guard, “which,” Bugliosi said, “was how you avoided Vietnam in those days.” No, you moron, that is not how people avoided Vietnam. They avoided Vietnam by running to Canada and dodging the draft! President Bush enlisted in the Air National Guard. And had his unit been called to service in Vietnam, he would have served.
Who hates Bush more? Bugliosi attacks Michael Moore and James Carville because they sucked at attacking the President. He goes after Michael Moore for making things up in Fahrenheit 9/11. Amazing.
Bush hates America and doesn’t care about our soldiers because he… smiles all the time. Yes, really – that was Bugliosi’s argument. He spends pages saying because Bush smiles when he is home and with friends, it’s proof he hates America. Pure liberal crazyness.
Chapter 4 – The Prosecution of George W. Bush for murder; The Legal Framework
“My motivation is not political.” - Vincent Bugliosi
Wow, does Bugliosi step in it this time: He makes the claim he’s a straight shooter, and this book is not political! Ha! He says, if a Democrat president had done with Bush did he would write a book about them. That is a lie: President William Jefferson Clinton, in 1998 attack Iraq which lead to the deaths of 600-2,000 innocent Iraqis. He did this only to distract the country from his impeachment trial. Bugliosi worships and adores President Clinton, like I said before even writing a book defending him from Paula Jones.
Bugliosi is one of the biggest, partisan, hacks in the country. To even claim to be unbiased is reprehensible. He throws in the fact that he supported John McCain in 2000. That means nothing. Everyone has a pony in the race before the primary. I supported Hillary in the 2008 primary against Barack Obama. That doesn’t mean she would get my vote in November. Is he supporting Senator McCain now that he is the GOP nominee for President? Any one who read the first part of this stupid book can see very clearly that the man despises Republicans and conservatives with a passion.
He says, “credibility has always meant everything to me.” Will say goodbye to that because after this book you have none, sir.
He makes the straw man argument that if Clinton can be impeached for having an affair, then surely Bush can be impeached for getting us into a war based on a lie. No, you idiot, Clinton was impeached for lying under oath to a grand jury.
Bugliosi reads op-eds and editorials from Liberal newspapers. Hey, they say President Bush lied, it must be true! He is pissy about them: if only they had the vision and wisdon of Bugliosi.
Whoa, Bugliosi says since President Bush supported the Death Sentence in Texas, so this means in Bugliosi point of view, that perhaps death is an appropriate sentence for Bush.
Bugliosi talks about his perfect prosecution rate. He’s going to hurt himself patting himself on the back so much.
Bugliosi dreams of using the “vicarious liability rule of conspiracy” on President Bush to try him for murder. The same one he used on Charles Manson. To do this, he would like to also try his co-conspirators. Since in Bugliosi fantasy Bush is not alone in his lies that lead us to war in Iraq. We also have Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Finally we get to the nut and bolts of what Bugliosi would use against President Bush. Bugliosi says:
“If a conspirator, or anyone for that matter deliberately sets in motion a chain of events a third party innocent agent to commit an act (here the killing of American soldiers by Iraqis) the conspirator is criminally responsible for that act.”
So he has President George W. Bush as the lead conspirator (along of course with his s co-conspirators (since in Bugliosi fantasy Bush is not alone in his lies that lead us to war in Iraq) Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Who you wonder are the pure, innocent, pristine innocent agents? Why, Mr. Vincent Bugliosi says the Iraqi soldiers and insurgents are! I mean after all, all they were doing is fighting against the evil, invading US army. Bugliosi actual quote is:
“The Iraqis soldiers (during the brief war) and the Iraqi insurgents since then were innocent of Bush’s crime of murder because they only killed American soldiers to repel an invader, what the American’s represented to them or in self defense.”
The Iraqi insurgents are not innocent freedom fighters like much of the far left liberal kook fringe believe. The Insurgents are evil terrorists who are not only killing Americans but also trying to destroy their own country. These innocent men as Bugliosi are the ones who should be tried for murder. Bugliosi wants to give them medals.
How many of these innocent insurgents have killed American soldiers by placing IED’s on the side of the road as they hide in the dark like the cowards they are waiting for our tanks to be blown up? How does Bugliosi really expect us to treat anything he says as sane when he spots this sort of nonsense?
In Bugliosi’s dark and twisted mind, Bush is responsible for the deaths of American Soldiers because of the legal idea of “Cause.”
In a legal sense Cause means “to bring about; to bring into existence.” So because President Bush caused us to war in Iraq; he thus caused there to be Iraq opposition. If this were a math problem, Bugliosi formula would be:
“President Bush + Lies = Iraq War = Innocent Iraqi Soldiers = American soldiers death.”
However if Bugliosi was honest with himself (HA) he would have to amend his little math problem to include the American people. Because a year after the war had started, and still finding no Weapons of Mass Destruction, the people of the United States of America reelected George W. Bush to a second term. In fact, President Bush got the most votes ever for president, 62,040,606.
American’s caused President Bush to be reelected. In doing so American’s caused the Iraq war to continue. Which then caused more American Soldiers to be killed.
Bugliosi keeps repeating the conspiracy of Bush, Cheney and Rice. He keeps failing to mention the scores of Democrats who voted to give President Bush the authority to go to war. Watch it again now:
We have Senator Nancy Pelosi in 2002 saying Iraq “Certainly has chemical and biological weapons. There is no question about that.” In 2002 we also have Senator Jay Rockefeller who says, “there is unmistakeable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons.”
Look at the language these two leading Democrats use, “no question about that” and “unmistakeable evidence.” Those are just two of the many voices on the Left. Why doesn’t Bugliosi name them co-conspirators. Oh yeah, Democrats… right. Moving on…
Okay, enough for today. We could really just end this whole debate by just quoting the Robb/Silbermann report.
“We conclude that it was the paucity of intelligence and poor analytical tradecraft, rather than political pressure, that produced the inaccurate pre-war intelligence assessments.”
VANCOUVER — U.S. army deserter Robin Long is slated to be deported back to his army base in Fort Knox, Ky., Tuesday, which would make him the first resister to the U.S. war effort in Iraq to be sent out of Canada.
Madam Justice Anne Mactavish of the Federal Court of Canada cleared the way for the deportation late Monday, dismissing a last-ditch attempt to delay the process while the 25-year-old pursued further appeals.
“I was just shocked at some things in [the] ruling,” Bob Ages, a spokesman for an informal group called Vancouver War Resisters Support Campaign, told reporters outside the courtroom. “It just flies in the face of everything that we and every Canadian know about the reality of what is going on.”
When he heads back to Fort Knox, he stands to get court marshaled. I hope they throw the book at him. Canada has been coddling these hippies for too long. It may be a different situation if we were in the sixties and their was a mandatory draft. That is not the case here, this punk enlisted in the military knowing full well what he was doing. He turned his back on his brothers and his country when he fled to Canada.
“American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.”
The Times of London reports this morning, “Iraqis lead final purge of Al-Qaeda.” How soon will MSNBC, CNN, ABC report this wonderful news? We’ll shall see…
Fighting for our freedom – Thank you and happy Independence Day!
“You and your comrades here have been described as America’s new greatest generation, and, in my view, you have more than earned that description. It is the greatest of honors to soldier here with you.” – General Petraeus
or our allies by murderous fanatics or authoritarian regimes. While the enemy takes a victory lap, we compete in a shameful medley relay of apologetics, defeatism and surrender. The initial reaction is almost always self-blame and an expression of sympathetic explanation for the aggressor’s actions.” – Gerard Baker 
Unfortunately, I was given Vincent Bugliosi new book “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.” I appreciate the gift, but the book was so seriously flawed I am shocked someone actually published it. The editor obviously has the same hateful agenda the author does. Bugliosi freely admits in the introduction having trouble finding someone to print his propaganda. 
