How Sweet It Is!
The headline from the NY Times:
Palin Defies Critics and Electrifies Party…(UPDATE 1:22 a.m.: Well, the headline says “Assails Critics” now – not quite as cool)…
Just didn’t want that to get buried in the updates to the post below…
UPDATE 12:08 a.m.: Also from the Times, Katharine Seelye:
The feeling inside the hall during Ms. Palin’s speech was a lot like that in Boston in 2004 when the crowd was dazzled by another fresh, young face, Barack Obama.
UPDATE 12:19 a.m.: Rick Klein of ABC News:
A whole lot of people watched Sarah Palin tonight and thought John McCain is a very smart man.
UPDATE 12:27 a.m.: Tom Shales of the Washington Post:
If the Republicans win the presidential election in November, it may well be said that they won it last night — the night that John McCain‘s brilliantly screwy choice for a running mate changed from laughingstock to national star.
UPDATE 12:31 a.m.: CNN’s all-star panel of all-liberal pundits? 4 A’s and a B…that’s the Dean’s list, baby!…
This is a bit off topic, but while Sarah Palin was putting the lie to the argument that she was a token appointee, I believe Joe Biden was off committing his first potentially serious gaffe.
(via Tigerhawk: http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2008/09/stakes-just-got-higher.html
the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/03/uselections2008.joebiden
which cites ABC without a link)
He’s promised that an Obama-Biden administration would make a point of investigating the Bush administration, and pursuing criminal charges where appropriate.
Haven’t we been hearing about an electorate tired of Washington partisanship?
Saw the headline, but largely ignored it in the euphoric relief I am feeling tonight…I’ll try to pay more attention tomorrow…
Investigation of wrongdoing can only count as partisanship? So Republicans that don’t like the Bush Administration’s behavior somehow count as flaming liberals, or what?
I can’t recall any administration ever launching an investigation about the previous administration. It’s considered “taboo”. I’m not sure if it’s a big deal or not, but there are people that will be troubled by it.
Hm, well, George Bush is definitely a war criminal, so I wouldn’t mind a change of tradition.
Also, as a quick sidenote, calling CNN’s panel all-liberal is sort of odd. Sanchez worked for Henry Bonilla and the Bush administration, Gergen is certainly a Republican, and Borger might be center-left but is first and foremost a serious journalist. I’ll give you Martin and Begala, but I think CNN’s panel is basically pretty balanced as far as these things go.
Doubtful. But if he is, he is still a liberal.
Gergen was an advisor to Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, and was then appointed by Clinton as a high-profile bipartisan gesture. Conversations with you would generally go better if knew basic facts or possessed a grasp of reality.
There’s the old Ryan!
War criminal – hah! Christopher Hitchens wrote an entire book laying out the case to call Henry Kissinger a war criminal, with a very detailed indictment.
You just throw it out there in the manner of a fact, no proof necessary!
But I suppose you would tell me it’s because “Bush lied, people died”. Save that for the Huffington Post. Bush made the same mistake the world intelligence community, the United Nations, and the Clinton administration made…he assumed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
He was wrong – but that doesn’t make him a war criminal. Even cherry-picking intelligence is a far cry from being a war criminal. Conversations with you would generally go better if you avoided extremist rhetoric and focused on basic facts, not wild allegations…
“He was wrong – but that doesn’t make him a war criminal.”
The Geneva Convention lists the following as being war crimes: torture, inhumane treatment, and unlawful deportation or transfer.
One example: the deportation of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, who was picked up at JFK Airport and deported to Syria where he was tortured for ten months, before being found to be completely innocent. So all three crimes were committed in his case. I’m not an expert on international law, but it seems to me to be prima facie evidence of a war crime.
The State Department has refused to apologize to or compensate him for his detention and torture.
I’m disinclined to be drawn into an argument on whether or not Bush is a war criminal, as it is completely hypothetical: you will never see Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld tried for war crimes, so why waste energy and virtual ink on debating it. However, I wouldn’t dismiss Ryan’s remark out of hand, as there is certainly a strong case to accuse the administration of war crimes. That’s all I’m saying.
Sorry, but I do dismiss it out of hand.
Should we try President Clinton for bombing a pharmaceutical factory to get everyone’s mind off the Lewinsky scandal?
Because that’s a stronger case than anything you can throw at Bush.
Let’s leave this crap for the maniacs at Daily Kos…and MoveOn, as it were…
And I don’t think Clinton is a war criminal, by the way…I just don’t want this thread to get hijacked and turn into Glenn Greenwald’s comments section…
Mark: I think you like to forget that I’m not partisan. Why would I care if we try Clinton or not? I’m trying to advocate for leaders who actually conduct foreign policy with an eye for the consequences of their actions.
So sure, let’s go ahead and try Clinton. How about we actually set the bar such that our Presidents think twice before committing war crimes? If there were actual punishment for, say, bombing pharmaceutical factories or torturing people, maybe we would do less of both. Since there aren’t, and since new administrations won’t investigate their predecessors, I guess I might as well just deal with it. There’s nothing like cynicism for excusing crimes against humanity.
I’m not looking to hijack the thread, and it’s an argument which is spectacularly unproductive. However, I would be remiss in my obligations as a decision08 poster if I did not post the simple answer to post 11.
Bill Clinton is no more guilty of a war crime in bombing a factory suspected of producing nerve gas than Bush is a war criminal when a bombing raid on the Taliban hits a civilian camp instead of guerillas. In the fog of war, mistakes happen. However, while inadvertently bombing the wrong target is a regrettable but inevitable circumstance of war, deporting and torturing a foreign national is the result of conscious decisions. The administrationm made the conscious decision that it is acceptable to detain foreign nationals, to send them to third countries, and to acquiesce in their torture.
You may be loathe to admit that the administration is guilty of war crimes, but the law is clear and the facts are not in dispute. To reference Saint Christopher: I’m not familiar with his case against Kissinger, but I’m hard pressed to think of things Henry did that George did not do.
In the interest of un-hijacking this thread, I’ll let Mark have the last word. Whatever he says, unless it’s a direct question he wants my answer to, I will let stand as the final thought on this issue.
I concur.
Oh, you don’t have to let me have the last word – it is my blog, and I have the privilege of getting to post my brilliant, brilliant thoughts in the bodies of the posts – hijack away, if you want! I just get touchy about this war criminal stuff…but (this is not my attempt to have the last word, btw) Peter, if you read Hitchens’ book The Trial of Henry Kissinger, you would realize that the bill of indictment reaches far, far, FAR beyond anything even the biggest Bush hater, with the possible exception of the 9/11 Truthers, have ever dreamed of accusing Bush (or even Cheney!) of.
Some examples: “Topics include what Hitchens casts as Kissinger’s role in helping Nixon undermine the Paris peace talks on the eve of the 1968 election; the bombings of Cambodia and Laos, which killed roughly a million civilians; the assassination of Chilean chief of staff General Rene Schneider, whose loyalty blocked the planned coup against Allende; Kissinger’s approval and support for Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor and the resulting genocide; his support for the Pakistan military government’s 1971 genocide in Bangladesh and for a bloody military coup in independent Bangladesh in 1975, and more.” (from an Amazon review of the book)…
I’m not convinced by every particular Hitchens lays out…but the cumulative effect is very damning, indeed.
Now, I’m not saying Kissinger is a war criminal, either…I prefer to stay away from arguments of this sort – but the case is far stronger, and the charges more grave, than anything remotely connected to the War on Terror…