>> ^NetRunner:
It's easy, put your hands in the air and say "I surrender." At that point, killing him really would've been a war crime. There's no evidence that indicates he did anything of the sort.


Burden of proof? Evidence? Well, it's hard to have any evidence when the government rushes off under the cover of night and runs top secret exercises with zero transparency except for what they tell me they did. But, let's look at the facts. OBL was unarmed, he was shot, the government reported an untruth that a gun battle was waged, they also reported an untruth about him using his wife as a shield, they claimed they ran a DNA test and identified OBL, then cleaned him and dumped his body in the ocean all within 24 hours.

And you say the burden on proof is on the "we the people" of this country to prove or disprove the secret assassinations of our military and CIA? Rolling my eyes right now.

And, lol at "it's easy to raise your hands and say I surrender". What an apologist answer. Fucking murderous cretins. Yes, it's easy for you or me to raise our hands and say "I surrender" if the cops are outside our door with a bullhorn. Doubt anything remotely similar to that happened. lol

>> ^NetRunner:

But that's why I think you should explain your fixation with OBL's death. There are much better examples to use to advance the cause of civil liberties.


Gladly. 1. It's Osama Bin Laden. He's the bogeyman for our loss of liberties over the past decade and the reason we've marched headlong into wars. 2. The other "examples" weren't met with such momentous applause as the death of OBL - and the cheers were mostly from progressives I've always hoped were pro-human rights (namely the right to due process here). But instead what I see are a bunch of apologists who are pro-partisanship even at the cost of human rights.


>> ^Psychologic:

They didn't instantly teleport into his room... I doubt he was sleeping too well with helicopters hovering over his residence and gunshots being fired.
And as far as due process... while I agree with that notion in general, I'm wondering what the point would be in this case. Whether or not he actually perpetuated the 911 plans, he was more than willing to accept credit for it.
Bin Laden had at least several minutes to prepare from the time the heli arrived to the time his room was breached. I wouldn't discount the possibility of him having a bomb under his robe in the hopes they would try to arrest him.
Honestly, I have far more of a problem with predator drones nuking buildings than I do with this particular operation.


Yes, Osama heard the helicopters being valeted, got up, brushed his teeth, flossed, took a nice jaunt around the park, walked his dog, shat, and jerked it moments before strapping on his Explosinator 3000 under his robe.

Several minutes to prepare? You're obviously speculating. The reports of eye witnesses said the helis came fast as if they were out of nowhere.

As far as due process, what're you saying? That the premise for a trial is flimsy? And therefore assassination is a better recourse? Has everyone on here lost their fucking minds? Seriously, I think we're all getting hung up on this being OBL. Yes, he was a fucking scumbag that probably deserved worse than what he got, but goddammit he deserves a fair trial if we're to have a society of laws, no?

Isn't that what all you statists keep clamoring on and on about? That we should have laws? Well, where's your consistency here? A man, a very terrible scum of a human being, was robbed of his right to a fair trial. The "who" in this scenario is incidental. Rights aren't conditional based on someone's popularity. For fuck's sake.

And, yes, the drone planes are terrible. I despise those too, and we should constantly be outraged at that every second of every day and not stop voting out the lying bastards that continue bombing innocent people. Starting with Obama and any other Republican or Democrat that steps up in 2012 who isn't immediately in favor of ending these warlust aggressions against other people in sovereign lands.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Is it because Osama Bin Laden was rich and the murdered Chilean women and children were poor? Is your double standard about Freidmanite genocide a class issue, or is it just more of your typical everyday partisanship?
>> ^blankfist:
@dystopianfuturetoday, really? That's your analogous response? To compare an economist's role in fixing Chile's hyperinflation to a state sanctioned assassination that set a dangerous precedent of skirting the basic right to due process?
Bloodthirsty progressive needs to rethink his arguments.



lol

This is probably the worst attempt at building an argument you've made on the Sift since I've known you.

Is it because Osama Bin Laden was rich and the murdered Chilean women and children were poor? Is your double standard about Freidmanite genocide a class issue, or is it just more of your typical everyday partisanship?

>> ^blankfist:

@dystopianfuturetoday, really? That's your analogous response? To compare an economist's role in fixing Chile's hyperinflation to a state sanctioned assassination that set a dangerous precedent of skirting the basic right to due process?
Bloodthirsty progressive needs to rethink his arguments.

@Lawdeedaw, I didn't mean to offend. I just get tired of the accusations that Obama somehow wants Gitmo to stay open, likes it being open, didn't even try to close it, etc. I think on the topic, he's tried, and has pretty much been defeated. I don't think lack of committment was the issue, and I don't think the politics of it would play out differently for Ron Paul. Also, Obama wasn't President in 2008, that was George Bush, who opened it, liked it being open, and argued that the world would end if someone closed it.

Also as sick as I am about bad intentions being ascribed to Obama, I'm just as sick of hearing noble intentions ascribed to Paul.

You know how everybody likes to trot out things Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc. said they'd do, but didn't get done? The same would happen with Paul. All the shit he promised to do, or not do, won't happen. He'd abandon some promises, break others, and sometimes just plain fail to deliver. He's a politician, not the second coming.

Also, the office of the President itself doesn't really have much power. Most of your power comes from your political coalitions, and Paul wouldn't have one at all. Even a proven consensus builder like Obama has found that Congressional partisanship trumps everything anymore. Paul, being a crank and a confrontational ideologue would get absolutely nowhere with either party. He's been in Congress for what, 30+ years? What's he ever accomplished? Even his wikipedia page struggles to find any legislative accomplishments.

Oh, and the media shitstorm that engulfs every President would absolutely eat him alive.

But all this is academic because he can't win the Presidency. He won't win the Republican nomination unless he abandons his principles, and if he doesn't win the nomination he won't run as an independent. If he did run as an independent, he'd just split the Republican vote and Obama would win reelection handily.

>> ^NetRunner:

It strikes me as funny how the right's partisanship makes them twist themselves in knots.
Killing Osama bin Laden is a sign that Obama has crossed some Rubicon, beyond which no man is safe? Please.
Napolitano himself said it's legal if we declare war. I know it's fashionable amongst the silly to pretend that there's something qualitatively different about a "declaration of war" and an "Authorization to Use Military Force", but I don't see a rational basis for it. In both cases, you're having Congress grant explicit authority for the US military to be used.
Well, the 2001 authorization to use military force allows the president to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against persons who authorized, planned or committed the 9/11 attacks. So, it's legal.


Yay! What a proud statist!

It strikes me as funny how the right's partisanship makes them twist themselves in knots.

Killing Osama bin Laden is a sign that Obama has crossed some Rubicon, beyond which no man is safe? Please.

Napolitano himself said it's legal if we declare war. I know it's fashionable amongst the silly to pretend that there's something qualitatively different about a "declaration of war" and an "Authorization to Use Military Force", but I don't see a rational basis for it. In both cases, you're having Congress grant explicit authority for the US military to be used.

Well, the 2001 authorization to use military force allows the president to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against persons who authorized, planned or committed the 9/11 attacks. So, it's legal.

Sounds like you still believe we live in a democracy. Obama went into office with the intention of ending torture, restoring habeas corpus, ending the patriot act, ending the war in Iraq and creating public health care system. He was not allowed to achieve any of these things in earnest. If Ron Paul were to be miraculously elected in 2012, he would encounter all the same roadblocks to the parts of his agenda that do not fall in line with corporatism. It would be nice for you to experience a politician you admire get worked by the system.

If we could all suspend our partisanship just long enough to get our campaign finance system under control and get some separation between corporation and state, we would all benefit. But it's not going to happen on its own, and it won't gain attention from politicians until we have mass strikes and mass protests. Unfortunately, partisan feuds and the focusing of attention on political celebrities like Bush and Obama always seems to keep our attention off that industrial boot on our collective throat. I don't think the kind of unity required is likely until things get much, much worse... if ever. The Machiavelli in me wonders if it wouldn't be wiser to vote for the greater of 3 evils. >> ^blankfist:

None of this matters. If you voted for him in 2008, you'll most likely vote for him again in 2012. Why break the trend towards fascism and imperialism?

>> ^quantumushroom:

Who is crazier:
Those who suspect a man refusing to release a document that would easily end all speculation MIGHT have something to hide,
or
those who still believe a nation can tax and spend itself into stability and prosperity, with the top producers paying the heaviest federal taxes and the "bottom" 50% paying nothing, but slurping up plenty of entitlements.


Those who suspect Obama isn't a naturally born citizen by a mile. There's overwhelming evidence that he was born in Hawaii. Providing a birth certificate won't easily end all speculation. If birthers won't accept the overwhelming facts that prove he was already out there, another piece of paper won't make one ounce of difference. Bill freakin' O'Reilly even dismisses birthers' claims. If this one simple fact can't be accepted by someone, how could you ever have a meaningful debate with them about anything?!

Look, we can debate economic theory all day, but the fact that Trump and other birthers get traction with this crap is absolute idiocy, and points to the acidic partisanship in this country. I used to joke that I bet that if a person from either the left or right said 1+1=2, the other would swear it didn't. I thought I was being humorously hyperbolic. It's not a joke anymore. That's what exactly is happening here. It's pathetic.

And your platitudes about tax policy don't help either. You're indicting progressive taxation and a basic social safety net. Both have been in place at a basic level since the New Deal, and you're claiming that can't work?! It most certainly can if done right. The US has been the most economically successful nation on earth for the majority of that time. It's basic historical fact you're arguing against to make an ideological point.

I don't know if his accusation that she's carrying water for Obama is fair. I honestly believe that she just isn't bright enough to make the connections. I'm not big on quoting people, but Napoleon said, "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." Instead of malice he was ascribing partisanship to her, but you get the point.

The left is shocked---SHOCKED I TELLS YA----about any suggestions of media-promoted VIOLENCE!

To wit:


A new low in Bush-hatred

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
September 10, 2006

SIX YEARS into the Bush administration, are there any new depths to which the Bush-haters can sink?

George W. Bush has been smeared by the left with every insult imaginable. He has been called a segregationist who yearns to revive Jim Crow and compared ad nauseam to Adolf Hitler. His detractors have accused him of being financially entwined with Osama bin Laden. Of presiding over an American gulag. Of being a latter-day Mussolini. Howard Dean has proffered the "interesting theory" that the Saudis tipped off Bush in advance about 9/11. One US senator (Ted Kennedy) has called the war in Iraq a "fraud" that Bush "cooked up in Texas" for political gain; another (Vermont independent James Jeffords) has charged him with planning a war in Iran as a strategy to put his brother in the White House. Cindy Sheehan has called him a "lying bastard," a "filth spewer," an "evil maniac," a "fuehrer," and a "terrorist" guilty of "blatant genocide" -- and been rewarded for her invective with oceans of media attention.

What's left for them to say about Bush? That they want him killed?

They already say it.

On Air America Radio, talk show host Randi Rhodes recommended doing to Bush what Michael Corleone, in "The Godfather, Part II," does to his brother. "Like Fredo," she said, "somebody ought to take him out fishing and phuw!" -- then she imitated the sound of a gunshot. In the Guardian, a leading British daily, columnist Charlie Brooker issued a plea: "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. -- where are you now that we need you?"

For the more literary Bush-hater, there is "Checkpoint," a novel by Nicholson Baker in which two characters discuss the wisdom of shooting the 43rd president. "I'm going to kill that bastard," one character fumes. Some Bush-hatred masquerades as art: At Chicago's Columbia College, a curated exhibit included a sheet of mock postage stamps bearing the words "Patriot Act" and depicting President Bush with a gun to his head. There are even Bush-assassination fashion statements, such as the "KILL BUSH" T-shirts that were on offer last year at CafePress, an online retailer.

Lurid political libels have a long history in American life. The lies told about John Adams in the campaign of 1800 were vile enough, his wife Abigail lamented, "to ruin and corrupt the minds and morals of the best people in the world." But has there ever been a president so hated by his enemies that they lusted openly for his death? Or tried to gratify that lust with such political pornography?

As with other kinds of porn, even the most graphic expressions of Bush-hatred tend to jade those who gorge on it, so that they crave ever more explicit material to achieve the same effect.

Which brings us to "Death of a President," a new movie about the assassination of George W. Bush.

Written and directed by British filmmaker Gabriel Range, the movie premieres this week at the Toronto Film Festival and will air next month on Britain's Channel 4. Shot in the style of a documentary, it opens with what looks like actual footage of Bush being gunned down by a sniper as he leaves a Chicago hotel in October 2007. Through the use of digital special effects, the film superimposes the president's face onto the body of the actor playing him, so that the mortally wounded man collapsing on the screen will seem, all too vividly, to be Bush himself.

This is Bush-hatred as a snuff film. The fantasies it feeds are grotesque and obscene; to pander to such fantasies is to rip at boundary-markers that are indispensable to civilized society. That such a movie could not only be made but lionized at an international film festival is a mark not of sophistication, but of a sickness in modern life that should alarm conservatives and liberals alike.

Naturally that's not how the film's promoters see it. Noah Cowan, one of the Toronto festival's co-directors, high-mindedly describes "Death of a President" as "a classic cautionary tale." Well, yes, he says, Bush's assassination is "harrowing," but what the film is really about is "how the Patriot Act, especially, and how Bush's divisive partisanship and race-baiting has forever altered America."

I can't help wondering, though, whether some of those who see this film will take away rather a different message. John Hinckley, in his derangement, had the idea that shooting the president was the way to impress a movie star. After seeing "Death of a President," the next Hinckley may be taken with a more grandiose idea: that shooting the president is the way to become a movie star.

^I think the hesitation has to do with the fact that, while Obama does seem to be under control of corporate-media-military-pharma-oil-banking-genetically-modified-organism-industrial complex, he is still far preferable to the alternatives. It's important to criticize Obama and the government, but he is the best option at the moment, and things could be much worse. It's a delicate balancing act. I'm pretty pissed at both the government and freemarketologists at the moment. I think that they -whether they know it or not- are working towards the same goal of plutocracy.

Look into Milton Friedman and his involvement in pushing free market principles 'at the butt of a gun' in Chile. Friedman is a hero of the freemarket class, and a big hypocrite when it comes to 'coercion' and 'force'.

I also think blankfist's extreme partisanship and aggressive nature turns many videosifters off. I think the same could be said for myself, which is a bummer, but we are who we are. I've been trying to soften my language. Look at all the 'i thinks' in this message!

Not to mention it is also blatantly hypocritical of you to pretend to want smaller government and yet allow your country lie to you while leading you into costly wars that result in countless lost lives.

Then again you've just said yourself that you're more interested in partisanship and I assume then will just follow whichever way the Republican tide swings.

Bush in 2000? Non-interventionist foreign policy and lower government spending? Sounds great!

Bush in 2004? Why, he lodged our budget off track and caused the debt to rise from 3.3 trillion to 4 trillion and engaged the country in 2 wars that will achieve nothing against terrorism because a transient terrorist network will just relocate! Like to Yemen and Somalia. Let's re-elect him.

Republican Congress in 2010? Why, Bush and mostly the same congressmen who voted for his policies managed to raise the deficit to 5.1 trillion by the end of the second term while delivered lower growth than Clinton! If there's anyone who can recover the economy and put the budget back on track, it's them! Tax cuts clearly and demonstrably led to this deficit, so why not try them again?

When will you wake up and realise that the set of partisan polices you subscribe to are ever changing and entirely inconsistent?

@blankfist partisanship test.

Wal*Mart kills small businesses, ships jobs to sweatshops overseas, offers wages so terrible that many of their employees are below the poverty line, are abusive to domestic workers and invasive of their privacy, spy on their workers, bust unions, ect.

There is nothing even vaguely just about this corporation.

I know you love ReasonTV, largely because they tell you what you want to hear. I believe that if you were willing to take a step back and set your partisanship aside, it would become clear to you that this is thinly veiled corporate propaganda, from a media outlet that perverts the concepts of liberty and a free market that you hold dear in order to boost corporate power and profits. Much like the politicians you despise, Reason is on the corporate payroll.

Skepticism. Just do it.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
I don't think that's what he's saying. You should watch the video again. Never did he say the way to combat social injustice is to shop. He said lowered prices for the poor helps them, and going after the places that offer lowered prices is adding to the problem.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
The best way to combat social injustice is to shop? At Wal*Mart?! Really!?! Who knew?

Wal*Mart kills small businesses, ships jobs to sweatshops overseas, offers wages so terrible that many of their employees are below the poverty line, are abusive to domestic workers and invasive of their privacy, spy on their workers, bust unions, ect.

There is nothing even vaguely just about this corporation.

I know you love ReasonTV, largely because they tell you what you want to hear. I believe that if you were willing to take a step back and set your partisanship aside, it would become clear to you that this is thinly veiled corporate propaganda, from a media outlet that perverts the concepts of liberty and a free market that you hold dear in order to boost corporate power and profits. Much like the politicians you despise, Reason is on the corporate payroll.

Skepticism. Just do it.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
I don't think that's what he's saying. You should watch the video again. Never did he say the way to combat social injustice is to shop. He said lowered prices for the poor helps them, and going after the places that offer lowered prices is adding to the problem.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
The best way to combat social injustice is to shop? At Wal*Mart?! Really!?! Who knew?



(This comment is from a profile to profile discussion, but I thought it relevant enough to this discussion to add it to the thread)