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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SilentZ who wrote (303116)	9/14/2006 12:12:04 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575539

Wow. I hadn't read that. It says it all. Thanks.

To: SilentZ who wrote (303116)	9/14/2006 12:51:32 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1575539

Z, the most idiotic quote from Olbermann: Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people. The President — and those around him — did that. And he's from my alma mater. I guess he missed the part when Hillary held up the tabloid headline "Bush Knew" just six months after 9/11. Same old same old. First rule of partisan politics: Accuse the other side of partisan politics. Tenchusatsu

To: SilentZ who wrote (303116)	9/15/2006 2:14:27 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575539

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ’something to do’ with 9/11, is "lying by implication." The impolite phrase, is "impeachable offense." The sentiment grows more angry. There comes a time when words may not be enough.

To: SilentZ who wrote (303116)	9/15/2006 2:16:53 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1575539

Stampeding Congress Published: September 15, 2006 We’ll find out in November how well the White House’s be-very-afraid campaign has been working with voters. We already know how it’s working in Congress. Stampeded by the fear of looking weak on terrorism, lawmakers are rushing to pass a bill demanded by the president that would have minimal impact on antiterrorist operations but could cause profound damage to justice and the American way. Yesterday, the president himself went to Capitol Hill to lobby for his bill, which would give Congressional approval to the same sort of ad hoc military commissions that Mr. Bush created on his own authority after 9/11 and that the Supreme Court has already ruled unconstitutional. It would permit the use of coerced evidence, secret hearings and other horrific violations of American justice. Legal experts within the military have been deeply opposed to the president’s plan from the beginning, and have formed one of the most influential bulwarks against the administration’s attempt to rewrite the rules to make its recent behavior retroactively legal. This week, the White House sank so low as to strong-arm the chief prosecutors for the four armed services into writing a letter to the House that seemed to endorse the president’s position on two key issues. Congressional officials say those officers later told lawmakers that they did not want to sign the letter, which contradicts everything the prosecutors, dozens of their colleagues, former top commanders of the military and a series of federal judges have said in public. The idea that the nation’s chief executive is pressing so hard to undermine basic standards of justice is shocking. And any argument that these extreme methods would be used only against the most dangerous of international terrorists has been destroyed by the handling of hundreds of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, many of whom appear to have been scooped up in Afghanistan years ago with little attempt to verify any connection to terrorism, and now are in danger of lingering behind bars forever without a day in court. To lend his lobbying an utterly false sense of urgency, President Bush announced last week that he had taken 14 dangerous terrorists from the secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons where he had been holding them for years and sent them to Guantánamo to stand trial. But none of the prisoners is going anywhere, and the current high-pressure timetable is related only to the election calendar. The Geneva Conventions One section of the administration bill would put American soldiers in grave jeopardy by rewriting the Geneva Conventions, condoning the practice of hiding prisoners in secret cells, and permitting the continued use of interrogation methods that violate the Geneva Conventions at the C.I.A. prisons. Mr. Bush has made it clear that he plans to continue operating the C.I.A. camps. And he wants Congress to collaborate by exempting the United States from a provision in the Geneva Conventions that prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.” Mr. Bush says this wording is too vague, but that’s a dodge. What he really wants is Congressional authority to go on doing things to prisoners in C.I.A. jails that are clear violations of international rules. He also wants Congress to rewrite the War Crimes Act, which makes it a crime to violate the Geneva Conventions. The administration’s goal here is to avoid having C.I.A. interrogators, private contractors or the men who gave them their orders called to account for the immoral way the administration has run its terrorist detention centers. The opposition to these provisions by legal scholars, military lawyers and a host of former top commanders of the armed forces has been overwhelming. In recent days, two former chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff, Colin L. Powell, and John W. Vessey, wrote to Senator John McCain urging him to go on fighting the White House. “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” General Powell wrote. 12Next Page » nytimes.com