A Fighting Or A Challenge: Dick's Speech

The Guardian's US correspondent, Toby Harnden, proclaims that Mighty Dick "landed ten punches on Obama's jaw" in his speech yesterday.

Sounds like A FIGHTING OR A CHALLENGE to me. Let's go, Skippy.

1. "I've heard occasional speculation that I'm a different man after 9/11. I wouldn't say that, but I'll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities."

Harnden here says that Obama was just a wussy State Senator, and Cheney was making the big decisions.

Decisions like "ignoring intel showing Bin Laden was about to attack" and "failing to prevent 3,000 deaths". I sure want him in charge!

2. "The first attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a law- enforcement problem, with everything handled after the fact: arrests, indictments, convictions, prison sentences, case closed."

PRE 9/11 MINDSET! THIS IS AN UNENDING WAR! But the funny thing about treating it as a law-enforcement problem: We tried, convicted, and incarcerated the people behind that attack legally, and they are still in various maximum security and Supermax facilities in the United States, along with hundreds of other terrorists. It was done legally and safely. Instead, we scooped up hundreds of people, declared them enemy combantants illegally, and tortured the hell out of them in order to get casus belli for war with Iraq.

Imagine that. Following the Constitution is a "pre-9/11 mindset."

3. "By presidential decision last month, we saw the selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations. This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the public's right to know. We're informed as well that there was much agonizing over this decision. Yet somehow, when the soul searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth."

That's funny, because you could have said the same "nakedly political" charge that Harnden makes about Obama's photo release about the Abu Ghraib photos. We certainly learned far less than half the truth about detainees from Abu Ghraib...which is why Obama was put in the situation to begin with. Maybe if Cheney had released the full extent of the information of his programs...it's not like Cheney was the most nakedly political veep of our time or anything.

4. "It's hard to imagine a worse precedent filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse than to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessor. Apart from doing a serious injustice to intelligence operators and lawyers, who deserve far better for their devoted service, the danger here is a loss of focus on national security and what it requires."

Been over this argument many times before.

When the policies are criminal policies, then they should be criminalized. You broke the law, Dick. You broke the Geneva conventions. You said the justification for doing so was because the law didn't apply to you during wartime, and then you argued it didn't apply because the president said it was legal. You are not above the law.

5. "We had a lot of blind spots after the attacks on our country, things we didn't know about al Qaeda. We didn't know about al Qaeda's plans, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a few others did know. And with many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance, we did not think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all."

Harnden's idiotic argument is that Americans are willing to do whatever it takes to get answers, including torture. How far are you willing to go for that, America? The logical endpoint of that is allowing torture in criminal and civil cases too where informants and suspects don't want to talk. If a man is suspected of kidnapping a loved one and their life is possibly at stake, would you demand that the informant that the police have detained be waterboarded until they told you everything? How many lives are worth torturing a human being for? Once you go down that path, there is no climbing back up.

6. "On his second day in office, President Obama announced he was closing the detention facility at Guantanamo. This step came with little deliberation, and no plan. Now the president says some of these terrorists should be brought to American soil for trial in our court system. Others, he says, will be shipped to third countries; but so far, the United States has had little luck getting other countries to take hardened terrorists."

Now, here I have to award both Harnden and Cheney the point. Obama will indeed take poltical damage if he doesn't manage to keep that promise, and frankly I have my doubts that he will close Gitmo: his own party is pissing on itself in fear to prevent Obama from doing it.

However, if Obama can do it, he wins this point back.

7. "The administration has found that it's easy to receive applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo, but it's tricky to come up with an alternative that will serve the interest of justice and America's national security."

The way the Bush/Cheney administration treated European allies over the course of the last 7 years was at best indifferent, and at worst insulting. Even the UK hung up its spurs in Basra and said "no more troops for your war." We have a lot of bridges to rebuild, and yet Cheney once again treats simple diplomacy with military allies as "appeasing the enemy". It's a blockheaded approach, and change is needed.

8. "If fine speechmaking, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field."

Sigh, the same old "Democrats as effete nerdy wimps" argument. Terrorism will only be solved in the end by making peace or killing billions, and see the response to #7. This fool sees diplomacy itself as the enemy. Honestly.

9. "It's worth recalling that ultimate power of declassification belongs to the president himself. President Obama has used his declassification authority to reveal what happens in the interrogation of terrorists. Now let him use that same power to show Americans what did not happen thanks to the good work of our intelligence officials."

If there is concrete evidence that waterboarding saved a single American life, wouldn't Bush have declassified it in defense of his policies? Would not it have been the biggest news story of the year? Would it have not lead to the breakup, capture, or death of an entire terror cell and would it not be still hailed today as definitive proof that these "enhanced interrogation techniques" saved lives?

10. "To the very end of our administration, we kept al-Qaeda terrorists busy with other problems. We focused on getting their secrets instead of sharing ours with them. And on our watch, they never hit this country again. After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, 7- 1/2 years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalized."

See #1. You lost 3,000 lives, Dick. You don't get to play that card. Ever.

Final score, these guys are batting 1 for 10, and even then that one they don't get credit for until next January.

Thanks for playing however.