Obama's speech on race

[bobbob1313]

I've never met your dad. Is he Dick Cheney?

 

I hope not.

[bjorn_skurj]

That would be a shocker.

[John Smith]

You're kidding about what trigger dirty dick has his finger on right?

 

He does not need troops american or otherwiase to wage war on Iran. Israel has already done over flights of Syria it was in the news. These flights made syria turn on their ADA and give up some knowledge on what they have and where it is. Iraq of course will gracioulsy grant Israel overflight privledges to bomb Iran. The US Navy has a very strong presence in the gulf etc... and of course dirty dick was in the region to promote the peace process which was the same time period that Ofallon, an opponant of war with Iran, was fired. With the rhetoric once again being ratcheted up the table is set. Whether this all happens or not will only be told with the passing of time, but the intense desire is there and has been since day one.

[bjorn_skurj]

I can certainly see why Israel would think about war with Iran. I'm sure if Iran did get close to developing a nuclear strike capability, Israel would do something about it, with or without U.S. cooperation or consent.

[Atticus]

I can certainly see why Israel would think about war with Iran. I'm sure if Iran did get close to developing a nuclear strike capability, Israel would do something about it, with or without U.S. cooperation or consent.

 

Not if Mel Gibson has anything to say about it

[bobbob1313]

You're kidding about what trigger dirty dick has his finger on right?

 

He does not need troops american or otherwiase to wage war on Iran. Israel has already done over flights of Syria it was in the news. These flights made syria turn on their ADA and give up some knowledge on what they have and where it is. Iraq of course will gracioulsy grant Israel overflight privledges to bomb Iran. The US Navy has a very strong presence in the gulf etc... and of course dirty dick was in the region to promote the peace process which was the same time period that Ofallon, an opponant of war with Iran, was fired. With the rhetoric once again being ratcheted up the table is set. Whether this all happens or not will only be told with the passing of time, but the intense desire is there and has been since day one.

 

I still don't see what Dick Cheney can do about it. He isn't the military commander of the US. He's the vice president. You are way overstating his power.

[John Smith]

I can certainly see why Israel would think about war with Iran. I'm sure if Iran did get close to developing a nuclear strike capability, Israel would do something about it, with or without U.S. cooperation or consent.

 

But if they bomb and Iran has, like we have been told by our intelligence agencies, no atomic program, and they bommb at the request of our governemnt, what then?

 

 

I still don't see what Dick Cheney can do about it. He isn't the military commander of the US. He's the vice president. You are way overstating his power.

 

And you are way understating his power, dangerously so. He has more influence over Bush than Bush himself does.

[bobbob1313]

I'll bet any amount of money that the US doesn't invade Iran in the next 10 months. Like, a hundred gabajillion dollars.

[John Smith]

I'll bet any amount of money that the US doesn't invade Iran in the next 10 months. Like, a hundred gabajillion dollars.

 

I'll bet we don't physically invade either. But I will also bet that Iran is bombed (by us or Israel) before next Janaury.

[bjorn_skurj]

But if they bomb and Iran has, like we have been told by our intelligence agencies, no atomic program, and they bommb at the request of our governemnt, what then?

Despite their recent failure to neutralize the Hezbollah - a rare failure of the IDF - I think Israel has enough sense to not make an attack like that unless they were sure they had to do it. What was the story with what they blew up in Syria?

[mountain bed]

I'll bet we don't physically invade either. But I will also bet that Iran is bombed (by us or Israel) before next Janaury.

John I like how you say "before next January". The implications (at least to me) being somehow that it might get authorized in order to advance the Republicans' ability to keep control of the White House, or at the latest to give an incoming Democrat President an even larger load of shit to deal with.

 

I don't necessarily dismiss this out of hand but I gotta confess: that's just too morbid of a scenario for me to contemplate fully right now. Let's hope not, OK?

[Good Old Neon]

I still don't see what Dick Cheney can do about it. He isn't the military commander of the US. He's the vice president. You are way overstating his power.

 

I think maybe you should watch this:

 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/cheney/

 

In summation:

 

For three decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive, behind-closed-doors campaign to give the president virtually unlimited wartime power. Finally, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Justice Department and the White House made a number of controversial legal decisions. Orchestrated by Cheney and his lawyer David Addington, the department interpreted executive power in an expansive and extraordinary way, granting President George W. Bush the power to detain, interrogate, torture, wiretap and spy -- without congressional approval or judicial review.

 

Now, as the White House appears ready to ignore subpoenas in the investigations over wiretapping and U.S. attorney firings, FRONTLINE examines the battle over the power of the presidency and Cheney's way of looking at the Constitution.

 

"The vice president believes that Congress has very few powers to actually constrain the president and the executive branch," former Justice Department attorney Marty Lederman tells FRONTLINE. "He believes the president should have the final word -- indeed the only word -- on all matters within the executive branch."

 

After Sept. 11, Cheney and Addington were determined to implement their vision -- in secret. The vice president and his counsel found an ally in John Yoo, a lawyer at the Justice Department's extraordinarily powerful Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). In concert with Addington, Yoo wrote memoranda authorizing the president to act with unparalleled authority.

 

"Through interviews with key administration figures, Cheney's Law documents the bruising bureaucratic battles between a group of conservative Justice Department lawyers and the Office of the Vice President over the legal foundation for the most closely guarded programs in the war on terror," says FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk. This is Kirk's 10th documentary about the Bush administration's policies since 9/11.

 

In his most extensive television interview since leaving the Justice Department, former Assistant Attorney General Jack L. Goldsmith describes his initial days at the OLC in the fall of 2003 as he learned about the government's most secret and controversial covert operations. Goldsmith was shocked by the administration's secret assertion of unlimited power.

 

"There were extravagant and unnecessary claims of presidential power that were wildly overbroad to the tasks at hand," Goldsmith says. "I had a whole flurry of emotions. My first one was disbelief that programs of this importance could be supported by legal opinions that were this flawed. My second was the realization that I would have a very, very hard time standing by these opinions if pressed. My third was the sinking feeling, what was I going to do if I was pressed about reaffirming these opinions?"

 

As Goldsmith began to question his colleagues' claims that the administration could ignore domestic laws and international treaties, he began to clash with Cheney's office. According to Goldsmith, Addington warned him, "If you rule that way, the blood of the 100,000 people who die in the next attack will be on your hands."

 

Goldsmith's battles with Cheney culminated in a now-famous hospital-room confrontation at Attorney General John Ashcroft's bedside. Goldsmith watched as White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andy Card pleaded with Ashcroft to overrule the department's finding that a domestic surveillance program was illegal. Ashcroft rebuffed the White House, and as many as 30 department lawyers threatened to resign. The president relented.

 

But Goldsmith's victory was temporary, and Cheney's Law continues the story after the hospital-room standoff. At the Justice Department, White House Counsel Gonzales was named attorney general and tasked with reasserting White House control. On Capitol Hill, Cheney lobbied Congress for broad authorizations for the eavesdropping program and for approval of the administration's system for trying suspected terrorists by military tribunals.

 

As the White House and Congress continue to face off over executive privilege, the terrorist surveillance program, and the firing of U.S. attorneys, FRONTLINE tells the story of what's formed the views of the man behind what some view as the most ambitious project to reshape the power of the president in American history.

 

and then, as sort of like a main course, you should read this:

 

The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 - Ron Suskind

[Good Old Neon]

I can't believe I am about to say this, but I agree completely with IKOL here and I don't think IKOL and I have the same political leanings at all. History has been made.

 

I'll second that.

[mountain bed]

Here's a take on Obama's pastor from a local (weekly) paper, courtesy of our resident muckraker:

 

http://www.nuvo.net/articles/wright_is_right/

[Reni]

I love Frontline and highly recommend that show on Cheney. It is chilling. The stuff on David Addington? I was especially blown away by the interview with the guy from the Office of Legal Council and his telling of the Ashcroft hospital bed story.

 

Also, I got this in my email today:

 

FRONTLINE

http://www.pbs.org/frontline/

 

- This Week: "Bush's War" (270 minutes),

March 24th and 25th at 9pm on PBS (Check local listings)

 

 

In the Fall of 2001, with the campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in full swing in Afghanistan, veteran producer Michael Kirk walked into FRONTLINE's Boston office with a stunning piece of news: In Washington, he'd learned, a small group of policy insiders had quietly begun planning for what they called "Phase 2" -- the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

 

Over the next six years, Kirk and a handful of other FRONTLINE production teams would pursue every major aspect of the Bush administration's "war on terror." On the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, inside Pakistan's lawless tribal areas and the radical mosques of Europe, and behind closed doors in Washington, FRONTLINE has conducted some four hundred interviews on the war, often with administration insiders who reveal the anguished decisions, the bitter policy battles and the almost Shakespearean dramas that played out among the conflict's chief actors: Powell and Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, and Bush.

 

Now, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, FRONTLINE presents "Bush's War," airing Monday and Tuesday night. Drawing on some forty hours of FRONTLINE films and incorporating significant new interviews, this two-part series may well become the definitive documentary analysis of one of the most challenging periods in our country's history.

 

Why watch four-and-a-half hours of a story whose broad outlines, and many unfortunate details, you think you already know? Because drawing the elements of this story into one rich and sweeping narrative enables us to better see and understand how we've gotten to where we are in this post-9/11 world, and where we might go from here.

 

We hope you'll join us Monday and Tuesday nights. If you can't, the full series is streamed on our site in an upgraded video player that embeds an array of related interviews and background material and offers full screen viewing. We also have an annotated master timeline comprised of 175 video clips and the full collection of interviews conducted on the war. And after watching "Bush's War," we invite you to join the discussion at http://www.pbs.org/frontline/bushswar/

[VenusStopsTrain2]

A little side bar here..was listening to Sound Opinions from 2 weeks ago..and the guys talked about the different candidates and the songs they play on their campaign...and apparently a few songs have been written for Obama by Will.I.Am as well as a video or two you can find on you tube. They even gave the 1-800 number out and told the other candidates they should call for song ideas

[bjorn_skurj]

Here's a take on Obama's pastor from a local (weekly) paper, courtesy of our resident muckraker:

 

http://www.nuvo.net/articles/wright_is_right/

Most of what Wright is quoted as saying is reasonably accurate - I have a bit of a problem with the alleged non-eyelash-battering over Hiroshima/Nagasaki - but it pisses people off whose conception of this country's history never evolved past what they learned in grade school - i.e., America is Great because America is Good, and America has always been Good and continues to be to this day and, as a matter of fact, always will be. This may be true of us as a people (hard to shake that nativist exceptionalism) but it hasn't been always true of our government. I am not happy with those, both inside this country and out, who won't make that distinction, and realize that it applies to every other people on this Earth.

That said, I think al-Qaida and radical Islam is not merely a creation of cynical, manipulative U.S. foreign policy. So much of what America is about - our culture - is not a political entity and is not regulated by the government. I think what we face in essence is a revulsion against the threat our culture (our "freedom," if you will), one of our greatest exports, is perceived as posing to traditional Muslim culture. We in the West have made the break between religion and state, after a great deal of bloodshed and horror. Islam has not done that - in fact, Islamic leaders seem to think that that is exactly the wrong thing to do, and it may take the kind of bloodshed and horror seen in Europe during the Catholic/Protestant wars of the 16th and 17th centuries before Islamic leaders realize that that separation is necessary and desirable. While the average, everyday inhabitant of a Muslim country might well be enamored of whatever American "democracy, whiskey, sexy" he can get his hands on, and his wife might dream of a day she can get an education and drive a car, his leaders, who've used religion as a control mechanism for a thousand-plus years in the same way the medieval church did, see "democracy, whiskey, sexy" as a clear and present danger to their jobs, their riches and their necks.

They are not wrong for seeing it so - highfaultin' speeches are one thing, but nothing spreads the ideals of personal liberty and freedom of choice like "Baywatch." Despots haven't much to say when their people see the kind of prosperity and happiness people in democracies enjoy; the more people living in unfree lands know about what goes on in free ones, the more they demand that freedom for themselves. (This is why the Cuba embargo hasn't worked and is exactly the wrong thing to do.) This culminates in the idea of some Muslim thinkers that the planet is too small for both Islam and non-Islam - if Islam is to live, then all that is not Islam must die. It is that thinking which fuels al-Qaida and that is why even if the U.S./the West does everything you think it would need to do to make peace - bug out of Iraq, repudiate Israel, whatever else - the threat would remain.

The way forward, then, is two ways. First, those individuals who mean us harm as in 9/11-style harm must be detected and neutralized. This should not, must not, be done sadistically and cruelly, but it must be done. And to be honest, if that means some people who ought not to have their phones tapped get their phones tapped, I can live with that. The fact that the American West is not dotted with internment camps for Muslims kind of surprises me sometimes, but it is a testament to the improvement we've made since World War II.

Second, we need to continue to bombard Muslims with the U.S. of A. full-bore - the good, the bad, the ugly. We have to push the thesis at all times that the real way to live life is to constantly question and challenges ourselves and our leaders to make the more perfect union and the more perfect world and that even if you've been told otherwise your whole life, it is you who controls your destiny. Look what happened in 1989 when Eastern Europe said, en masse, "We will no longer participate in this. We want something better." Maybe what we saw in Berlin and Prague we will one day see in Riyadh and Tehran.

 

(With credit and apologies to Bill Maher, Paul Berman, F.D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.)

[Chuck Turner]

Here's a take on Obama's pastor from a local (weekly) paper, courtesy of our resident muckraker:

 

http://www.nuvo.net/articles/wright_is_right/

 

. . . i voted Obama in the CA primary and will vote for him again in Nov. 08 . . . interesting DUI stats in that article, Roger Clinton lived on my street . . .

 

I would suggest Howard Zinns "A People's History of The United States". Even Professors at the community college use that book as a text.

[John Smith]

John I like how you say "before next January". The implications (at least to me) being somehow that it might get authorized in order to advance the Republicans' ability to keep control of the White House, or at the latest to give an incoming Democrat President an even larger load of shit to deal with.

 

I don't think it has anything to do with enhancing the Republicans ability to retain control of the White House. I think it has everything to do with a simple desire to have Iran dealt with in some fashion. The current occupants of the White House do not believe that their sucessors will do anything or rather will deal with Iran the way they want Iran dealt with. Remeber the guys in charge right now are always right and have never made a mistake so what they want done is the right thing regardless of necessity or reality. They also believe that it is necessary to have done...period. The threat of a nuke is simply the reasonng for what they want done, just as using the spector of 91 and WMD was the reasonignbehind invading Iraq. These were the selling points, but it was simply on the agenda all along.

 

They had been selling Iran as the cause of all the troubles in Iraq, when the military released pictures of "Iranian" weaponry captured. people noticed that the pictures all seemed to be NATO issued stuff inclued the fact that everything (instructions, nomenclature etc...) was written in English on the weapons. Thus they had to change direction and claim the nuke weapon threat and started selling the Iranian preisident as a "hitler" wannabe. Trouble is that the Iranian president has less power in his country than the govenor of Texas has in Texas. i.e. the ayatolla's run the country just as the Texas legislature runs that state. The NIE came out saying that we were all wrong, and the admiral in charge says it is not necessary to attack Iran. The admiral got fired, the NIE has been trashed. The Atmoic Energy group said Iran was no threat, we down play that. The "speed boat" threats were distorted and blown out of proportion etc... They say that the neighboring countries fear Iran, but the neighboring countries issue statements in dissagreement with our ad ministration. My point being that they have been fishing for a reason for several years now, and time is growing short, the adminsitration prides itsself on action (regardles of the rights or wrong of the action) and they intend to act either directly or by proxy...elections be damned.

 

Of course this has little to do With Obama's speech or the fact that McCain is getting a free pass from the liberal media for his courting of the catholic haters Tim Lahaye and Pastor Hagee. McCain also got a free pass for his "Bomb Bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" ditty. and for his numerous gaffes in the past week.

[Good Old Neon]

I don't think it has anything to do with enhancing the Republicans ability to retain control of the White House. I think it has everything to do with a simple desire to have Iran dealt with in some fashion. The current occupants of the White House do not believe that their sucessors will do anything or rather will deal with Iran the way they want Iran dealt with. Remeber the guys in charge right now are always right and have never made a mistake so what they want done is the right thing regardless of necessity or reality. They also believe that it is necessary to have done...period. The threat of a nuke is simply the reasonng for what they want done, just as using the spector of 91 and WMD was the reasonignbehind invading Iraq. These were the selling points, but it was simply on the agenda all along.

 

They had been selling Iran as the cause of all the troubles in Iraq, when the military released pictures of "Iranian" weaponry captured. people noticed that the pictures all seemed to be NATO issued stuff inclued the fact that everything (instructions, nomenclature etc...) was written in English on the weapons. Thus they had to change direction and claim the nuke weapon threat and started selling the Iranian preisident as a "hitler" wannabe. Trouble is that the Iranian president has less power in his country than the govenor of Texas has in Texas. i.e. the ayatolla's run the country just as the Texas legislature runs that state. The NIE came out saying that we were all wrong, and the admiral in charge says it is not necessary to attack Iran. The admiral got fired, the NIE has been trashed. The Atmoic Energy group said Iran was no threat, we down play that. The "speed boat" threats were distorted and blown out of proportion etc... They say that the neighboring countries fear Iran, but the neighboring countries issue statements in dissagreement with our ad ministration. My point being that they have been fishing for a reason for several years now, and time is growing short, the adminsitration prides itsself on action (regardles of the rights or wrong of the action) and they intend to act either directly or by proxy...elections be damned.

 

Of course this has little to do With Obama's speech or the fact that McCain is getting a free pass from the liberal media for his courting of the catholic haters Tim Lahaye and Pastor Hagee. McCain also got a free pass for his "Bomb Bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" ditty. and for his numerous gaffes in the past week.

 

Great post.

[mountain bed]

Did anyone feel a strange sort of deja vu with McCain's " Barbara Ann" ripoff comment? I immediately was reminded of Reagan's "We begin bombing in 5 minutes" comment from, what was it, '82?

 

If you or I make ridiculous statements like these we're just laughed off as a poor attempt at humor, but should a person who is/trying to be leader of the free world say these things? McCain should know better.

[Good Old Neon]

Christopher Hitchens steps into the fray:

 

http://www.slate.com/id/2187277

[cryptique]

Maybe not the right thread for this, but...

 

Sixteen years ago' date=' the last time the Democrats won back the White House, fewer than half the delegates had been selected by the end of March, with big-state primaries in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and California still on the docket. This campaign year the Democrats are already [b']down to seeds and stems[/b] with 82 percent of the delegates having been chosen by March 11. This simple arithmetical fact -- combined with the scheduling of the 2008 Democratic Convention six weeks later than in 1992 -- is what gives such an air of unreality to the final installments of the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton soap opera.

...did Walter Shapiro just make a marijuana reference in a political column?

 

(full column here)

[Reni]

FRONTLINE

http://www.pbs.org/frontline/

 

- This Week: "Bush's War" (270 minutes),

March 24th and 25th at 9pm on PBS (Check local listings)

 

 

In the Fall of 2001, with the campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in full swing in Afghanistan, veteran producer Michael Kirk walked into FRONTLINE's Boston office with a stunning piece of news: In Washington, he'd learned, a small group of policy insiders had quietly begun planning for what they called "Phase 2" -- the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

 

Over the next six years, Kirk and a handful of other FRONTLINE production teams would pursue every major aspect of the Bush administration's "war on terror." On the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, inside Pakistan's lawless tribal areas and the radical mosques of Europe, and behind closed doors in Washington, FRONTLINE has conducted some four hundred interviews on the war, often with administration insiders who reveal the anguished decisions, the bitter policy battles and the almost Shakespearean dramas that played out among the conflict's chief actors: Powell and Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, and Bush.

 

Now, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, FRONTLINE presents "Bush's War," airing Monday and Tuesday night. Drawing on some forty hours of FRONTLINE films and incorporating significant new interviews, this two-part series may well become the definitive documentary analysis of one of the most challenging periods in our country's history.

 

Why watch four-and-a-half hours of a story whose broad outlines, and many unfortunate details, you think you already know? Because drawing the elements of this story into one rich and sweeping narrative enables us to better see and understand how we've gotten to where we are in this post-9/11 world, and where we might go from here.

 

We hope you'll join us Monday and Tuesday nights. If you can't, the full series is streamed on our site in an upgraded video player that embeds an array of related interviews and background material and offers full screen viewing. We also have an annotated master timeline comprised of 175 video clips and the full collection of interviews conducted on the war. And after watching "Bush's War," we invite you to join the discussion at http://www.pbs.org/frontline/bushswar/

 

I just finished watching the first two hours of this......it is well done, and intensely depressing. My only beef is how they portray Powell as a victim. Granted, he was battling power hungry bullies, like Cheney and Rumsfeld - but they seem to go to lengths to paint him as the duped victim. To some degree, I would agree, but I also hold Powell accountable for his words and actions - because he is, after all, an intelligent adult.

 

Part Two is tomorrow night.....tune in....I am sure their exploration on the CPA/Bremer era will be even more depressing.

[mountain bed]

Thanks for the heads up again Reni - I'll see if I can't get the first part on the computer here.

 

I've read so much stuff about this I don't know if I could get more depressed by watching, but you never know!

 

I don't necessarily see Powell as a victim (like you said, he's a smart guy) but this administration did leave him out to dry in my opinion. He hasn't written a tell-all of his time in the admin., has he? That would really be something.