State of the Union Address

More on the Liberal, than the JAG, but thought I would share this post from the Daily Kos...

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/28/221417/005

Back from the War

I'm back and just wanted to touch base. Thanx to Conservative Prof for putting up my out to lunch sign. Lots to talk about, but that'll have to wait for another time. I'll be back full time soon, though.

Out to Lunch...

Conservative Prof here, sitting in for the Liberal JAG. He's going to be away from the blog for a while, at an undisclosed (but work-related) location. As you know, he's opposed to the war. However, he is doing his sworn duty despite that fact, and that integrity is one of the reasons I love him (you know, like a Viking!).

So anyway, keep him in your thoughts and prayers, and look forward to when he comes home safely and begin hectoring those of us on the right again. I know I will.

-CP

Jonah Goldberg

Libs, hold your nose, we're going to discuss an article from the National Review, graciously forwarded by Conservative Prof.

Most of it I did have to hold my nose on - say the first 13 paragraphs. But then Goldberg goes on to kinda criticize the president. Not in the, hey your policies were terrible, kind of way, but more in the, well if he'd just played a little nicer with those bad, bad Democrats, things would have been a lot better, kind of way. For instance, rather than saying that warrantless wiretapping is bad, in and of itself, he says

If we are in a generations-long battle against an existential foe, then you can’t define domestic success as merely steamrolling this or that amendment to the FISA law through Congress. You need to define success as making such reforms uncontroversial. Better to have things be a little more difficult for the CIA, have a bit more oversight at the FBI, if in exchange Democrats see this as their war too.

well actually he doesn't really touch on the fact that the administration wiretapped without warrants and when discussions arose early on about changing FISA, the adminstration said we didn't need to change it and also the fact that the president assured the public that wiretaps of Americans did include warrants, when he knew they didn't--but hopefully you get my point.

And then there's this excerpt

This might sound unfair, but if George Bush had been a better president, John Edwards would never have dreamed of calling the war on terror nothing but a bumper sticker. As it stands right now, if any Democratic candidate other than Joe Biden or maybe Hillary Clinton (!) gets elected we will bug out of Iraq so precipitously it will be indistinguishable from abject defeat in the eyes of the world. And under any of them, the war on terror will become a glorified Elliot Spitzer style legal campaign. That is not a sign that President Bush has adequately led the country or prepared it for the struggles ahead.

First, if Bush had been a better president, the fight never would have been put in terms of a war on a tactic, so Edwards definitely would not have needed the bumper sticker quote. Second, memo to Jonah, in the eyes of the world, it's already an abject defeat. They'd view a withdrawal as the first step in our 12 step recovery from neoconaholism.

The curious case of the smuggled underwear

and speedos? More goings on at Guantanamo in this article by the Independent. Here's a little snapshot about one of the detainees

The second detainee accused of wearing the contraband underwear is a juvenile named Mohammed El Gharani, a Chad national, who was just 14 years old when he was seized by the Pakistani authorities and sold to the US military.
Reprieve say there is no evidence that Mohammed ever travelled to Afghanistan, nor that he intended to do so. Nevertheless, he is now one of 20 juveniles Reprieve has identified as being held in Guantanamo Bay. In interviews with his lawyers he claims he has been terribly abused, including having a cigarette stubbed out on his arm by an interrogator. He states that much of the abuse stems from his vocal objection to being called a "nigger" by US military personnel.

Quote of the day

Stolen from Political Wire...

"The President has been allowed to spy on Americans without a warrant, and our U.S. Senate is letting it continue... You know something is wrong when the New England Patriots face stiffer penalties for spying on innocent Americans than Dick Cheney and George Bush."-- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, quoted by NBC News.

Wiretapping only with a warrant, please

So say 64% of Americans anyway. So it's not just us dirty fucking hippies, I guess.