Being the Change I Wish to See

Liz Cheney is at it again. Her new web ad about the Obama justice department and attorneys who have represented or advocated for Guantanamo detainees questions their values and loyalty to the U.S. Are they really al-Qaeda sympathizers? No, they are not. They are just doing their jobs.

Ms. Cheney is playing the “guilt-by-association” card. There is a really big problem once you go down that path, extremely twisted logic. The following clip from The Rachel Maddow Show demonstrates taking guilt-by-association to its full conclusion (7 min.). The question is where do you stop? How far down the rabbit hole do you go?

Queue the scary music:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Be afraid!!! Are you scared?

Using Liz Cheney’s logic, aren’t all defense attorneys criminals if they defend guilty people in court? No. Our Constitution guarantees presumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and the accused are entitled to a vigorous defense. What about the attorney who defended Timothy McVeigh? Is he a terrorist sympathizer, too? No.

Defending the guilty is an integral part of our justice system. It’s the American way. It’s one of our founding principals. We can’t abandon those principals because we are dealing with foreign detainees whose arrests were botched. Botched arrests happen regularly, not quite like these, but they are not new. We have the processes to deal with it.

Let’s allow the DOJ to go forward and prosecute the detainees against whom we have reasonable evidence. We know our court system is far more effective than military tribunals. Here’s the score: Federal court system: 300 convictions of terrorist suspects since 2001; military tribunal system: 2 convictions.

Even Republicans and Conservatives are saying Cheney’s ad goes too far. It steps way over the line of reason when Bill O’Reilly of Fox News won’t even agree with her. The following clip from Countdown explores the legal and moral outrage over this web ad (7 min.):

I have to hope Liz Cheney keeps up her conspiracy witch hunts in public for as long as she wants. When it makes Conservatives back away from her, it’s possible for the moderates to move left just a bit and get back to the middle where moderates like to be.

When fear-mongers start to sound like loons to those who are already ideologically extreme, they are finally being seen in the correct light.

Do you buy Liz Cheney and Keep America Safe’s bullpucky on this? If not, what other fear-mongering crap do you now question about what they have said?

If it’s a Cheney talking, I must admit I won’t believe a word of it because whatever “it” is that any of them are saying comes out of irrational fear of another terrorist attack on the U.S. Future terrorist attacks are possible, but so was nuclear war during the entire cold war. You can’t live your life in constant fear of what might happen. If we cower in fear, the terrorists win.

I wonder if the Cheney home is equipped with a fully stocked bomb shelter and survival gear…

BTW, Rachel posted bail with Kent Jones in the amount of slices of pizza, and borrowed the handcuffs from Jimmy Fallon. She was back on her show the next night.

Technorati Tags: al-Qaeda, Countdown, David Corn, Guantanamo Bay prison, guilt by association, Lawrence O'Donnell, Liz Cheney, MSNBC, Obama Administration, Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show, U.S. department of justice

written by Sherri Joubert \\ tags: al-Qaeda, Countdown, David Corn, Guantanamo Bay prison, guilt by association, Lawrence O'Donnell, Liz Cheney, MSNBC, Obama Administration, Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show, U.S. department of justice

If you haven’t read the previous posts I’ve written about war and peace, national security, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the atrocities that were committed under the Bush administration, please read through the categories “civil rights and justice”, “terrorism” and “war and peace”. This post is another piece of a huge chunk of history being made week-by-week as more information is uncovered about Bush administration policies; especially foreign policy, war policy, and blatant violations of the law and U.S. Constitution.

Tom Ridge was the first Secretary of Homeland Security under the Bush administration. His book

The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…And How We Can Be Safe Again

was just published, and he’s already back-peddling from what he said about politicization of raising or lowering the security threat level. Why is he backing down from his statements that he thought raising the threat level may have been politically motivated? Did somebody get to him? He also claims he left DHS after Bush’s first term because that was the agreement he had originally made with the administration when he came on board. He doesn’t explain this in the book, and called his language a poor choice of words.

Please watch the following video of the first segment of his interview with Rachel Maddow on September 1 (13 minutes):

Tom Ridge wrote about the botched response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He was no longer the Secretary and let the DHS have it in the book. (6 minute video, same interview):

I think the slip of saying “heart burn” instead of “heart break” is telling. The government seems to see the whole thing as a bad case of heart burn for them. His disgust over what happened because of the actions of an agency of which he was the former Secretary was evident.

His statements about FEMA and DHS not being responsible for not evacuating the poor, handicapped, and hospitals and nursing homes is false. As soon as the President declares an area a disaster the Stafford Act goes into effect, nationalizing everything in the disaster area, and that authority is retroactive 24 hours. So the federal government was fully responsible for the evacuation of New Orleans. Though the state can still act and Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin should have had plans in place to get those people out, the feds were in charge. State and local government are culpable, but FEMA and DHS were responsible.

Following is part 3 of the interview (10 minutes) with Former Governor Ridge debating Rachel about the decision for the Iraq War.

Does Mr. Ridge really buy it that we had national security reasons to go into Iraq? Does he really believe he would sell the Iraq war to the American people knowing then what he knows now? Does he really believe the whole thing hung on faulty intelligence? Does he believe it was not based on a highly politicized forgone conclusion that we were going into Iraq because the Administration already decided to do it? That they were combing the intelligence for any piece of evidence they could highlight to justify the war?

If he really believes what he’s saying, he is naive. I strongly believe the Cheney/Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq for their oil and to get rid of Saddam Hussein. It was clear to me that Colin Powell was struggling through his presentation to the U.N. to convince them that we had clear evidence of WMDs in Iraq. Secretary Powell’s body language and hesitated speech made it clear that he didn’t believe what he was saying.

I believe our former administration would and did commit our blood and treasure to invade Iraq because they wanted to. History will show this Iraq war was by choice, and we were acting imperialistically. It will not be looked on kindly in the future.

One of the things I truly love about The Rachel Maddow Show is that she does long-form interviews with guests. This interview took 31 minutes of actual content of the roughly 43 minutes of content produced for each one-hour show. You get 17 minutes of commercials per hour of broadcast time. Another thing I love so much about TRMS is Rachel has very civil, though sometimes heated, debates with guests with whom she disagrees or who disagree with her. These are the kinds of debates that should be going on in Congress over the issues our country needs to resolve.

On September 2, Rachel reflected and commented on her interview with Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge. Her reflections are about the big picture consequences of people like Tom Ridge not stepping up to the plate and distancing themselves from the Bush administration and the continued protagonism of the Bush/Cheney Doctrine (9 minutes):

I agree with Rachel. The failure of the GOP to admit regret and show any remorse or investigate the Bush administration’s leadership role and acknowledge that mistakes were made is the primary reason it no longer has credibility and won’t return to power for a long time, if ever. I am saddened that the two party system we rely on in American political discourse has completely broken down.

My questions are: Do we ever get the GOP back as a thinking and intelligent party that can once again take part in real debate of the facts of the issues facing us? Are we destined to remain a one-party system? Will another party rise up and become the other major political party in America?

The book is The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…And How We Can Be Safe Again by Tom Ridge.

Technorati Tags: Dick Cheney, GOP disgrace, Iraq war, Planet Cheney, Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Test of Our Times, Tom Ridge

written by Sherri Joubert \\ tags: Dick Cheney, GOP disgrace, Iraq war, Planet Cheney, Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Test of Our Times, Tom Ridge