NYTimes on Bush Interview

[East Street Trader]

Blair is indeed nearly as bad.

He too is imprisoning without trial - although not yet on quite the Guantanamo Bay scale - and he joined enthusistically in the attempts to murder Saddam Hussein. Although, as yet, he has not engaged in any rabble rousing rhetoric nor any appeal to patriotism.

Whether he would have done so had London been subjected to a terrorist outrage on the scale of the WTO attack I don't know.

But he has undermined our democracy here in more insidious ways. He has rendered the existence of a cabinet meaningless and has managed to turn the labour party into his personal lapdog.

He is quite bright. Which would be frightening if he was commited to creating a dictatorship. But I don't think he is so his intelligence and grip on reality is quite consoling.

But he must go. Which is a prospect just a little less impossible to contemplate post Iraq - for him, for the electorate, and most importantly for the labour party. I don't think they any more believe that he and only he makes them electable.

The way I read your post, Dan, was to mean that you don't mind about Guantanamo Bay because those imprisoned without trial there are not true blue yanks.

So that should Bush find reason to incarcerate me there you would be indifferent.

But maybe I misread it.

[The Mad Viking]

GWB:

"I believe it is essential that when we see a threat, we deal with those threats before they become imminent," he said. "It's too late if they become imminent."

You know, sane people think you do not attack people because you perceive a future threat.

This really is nothing less than totally outrageous.

Next time I'm in the US, and someone gives me a dirty look, and maybe has one hand out of my view, I guess it's my duty to kick the sh!t out of him. I mean, I clearly perceived a threat, it was actually more or less and imminent one.

Sweet mother of dog.

[DanS]

The way I read your post, Dan, was to mean that you don't mind about Guantanamo Bay because those imprisoned without trial there are not true blue yanks.

Well, that's one factor to be sure. Even true blue yanks are getting 10 years in the federal Penn for having fought with the Taliban/al Qaeda.

Overall, I'm not very sympathetic to the situation that the detainees got themselves in. They put themselves into a lawless area with no government because they thought they would be outside the reach of the US (otherwise, what would the point be of going there?).

Well, it turns out that the US has a pretty long reach. This led to a situation where they existed in a breach in the law and a murky area when it comes to US responsibilities. Further, this breach is lengthened by the way in which they chose to fight and the goals they were fighting for. There's nobody that will do the surrendering for them on the battleship or somebody that the enemy (the US) can go to in order for a treaty ending the war.

So what you have is a group of men who need to be separated from an abstract battlefield for an indefinite period of time and who have no recognized legal status. That seems like a pickle of their own doing. Not mine. Not the U.S. government's. The US government need only act when it seems clear that the "surrendering" has taken place. In the meantime, they're getting 3 square meals, a roof over their heads, and reading material.

Regarding Blair, I was making a broader point. It seems silly to me to accuse an American president of strains of dictatorship, when he has stayed assiduously on the side of the angels with regard to our constitution, which clips his wings rather ferociously. A Brit PM has many fewer limitations, so I would expect you to be more anxious about your own institutions, not ours.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Sava
gore was such a pud and a weak candidate... with a dope like bush, it should have never been close enough for florida to matter.

A weak candidate!?!? Obviously, you forgot how CLOSE the election of 2000 was.

[Ned]

East St. Trader, exactly what crimes do you believe we should charge the Al Qaeda prisoners of war?

[DanS]

I also thought Gore proved to be a weak candidate. For instance, he really screwed up the debates, which he had no business screwing up. Also, the strategy he used (only going after about 52% of the vote), turned out to be a poor one. Bush also went after 52% of the vote, but that strategy proved to be a good one.

[Tripledoc]

Originally posted by DanS
So what you have is a group of men who need to be separated from an abstract battlefield for an indefinite period of time and who have no recognized legal status.

Patently wrong according to my understanding.
The reason that the prisoners of war, were put into the Guantanamo concentration camp, is that legally Guantanamo is Cuban territory leased to the US.

A writ of habeas corpus should, according to a ruling of a US circuit court, be given to the families of the prisoners. However since Cuba does not grant its prisoners these rights, a fact that has been much criticized by the US and others, the United States is within its rights not to grant the Guantanomo prisoners such rights.

Now, if this strikes anyone as especially practical, humane or even sane, I don't know.

[DanS]

Well, what you're asking for is that the US remove them from the pickle they got themselves into. At the present time, I see no reason to demand that my government do this. Is our security enhanced by doing so?

[East Street Trader]

Originally posted by Ned
East St. Trader, exactly what crimes do you believe we should charge the Al Qaeda prisoners of war?

With whatever crime each is believed to have commited, Ned.

Maintaining the rule of law increases your security by preventing those with power abusing it, Dan.

A commitment not to imprison without trial is one of the main concessions secured by our Magna Carta and your founding fathers afforded it equal prominence.

I agree with you that my own nearest concern is to constrain by insistence upon the rule of law those to whom I entrust power over me.

But the UK suffered badly - along with many others - when Germany fell into the hands of a dictator. Should the US go the same way it seems to me the result for the rest of the world will be worse still.

[Ned]

My point, East St. Trader, is that POWs are generally immune from such prosecutions. Their participation in hostilities is generally not considered criminal.

[DanS]

I agree with you that my own nearest concern is to constrain by insistence upon the rule of law those to whom I entrust power over me.

Again, you're skirting the issue. British PMs can be dictators much more easily than American presidents. As such, they require a hell of a lot more oversight. This isn't just a general case of proximity of interests.

Your fear fetish with the power of American presidents is odd. With such a fetish, you could spin out a whole lot of bad scenarios, few of which have any value.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by MrFun
A weak candidate!?!? Obviously, you forgot how CLOSE the election of 2000 was.

Precisely. Had Gore not been a weak candidate, he should have, by all rights, been elected in a landslide. Bush was such a weak candidate himself that Gore's losing to him, even so narrowly, is downright embarrassing.

Gore is a great public servant and dedicated policy person whom I personally like a great deal, but he's a terrible campaigner, and that's what made him a weak candidate. Granted, had Clinton not had the impeachment debacle over him, I think Gore would have won, if just.

[East Street Trader]

Bush's administration does not accept that those incarcerated in Guantanamo bay are PoWs Ned.

Because if they were, the terms of the Geneva Convention required their release long ago. And require them to have been treated wholly differently meanwhile.

Dan, I put no faith in constitutions constraining potential dictators - whether the constitution in question is the UK's, the US's or Germany's. It is men and women who must do that. By insisting that the things in their constitutions are respected.

[DanS]

EST: There is no way to argue against your paranoia, so I'll stop. I can list any number of ways in which Bush has stayed within the confines of the constitution, or submitted to judicial review without reservation. I can show you that other presidents have not done the same, and they weren't accused of having dictatorial tendencies. But that apparently isn't good enough for you.

Bother.

[Agathon]

Are there still some people defending the Administration's pre war rhetoric.

As I've said a million times now, it didn't matter if there were WMDs, since in all likelihood that meant battlefield chemical weapons and perhaps some anthrax. Other than in certain well defined battlefield situations both of these are next to useless, even if Saddam were to "give them to terrorists" (which there is no evidence he would have). Chemical attacks do not work, as the Tokyo subway gas attack proved; and anthrax managed to kill what, five people? Besides, if terrorists want chemical weapons it would be easier to make them themselves, as the Aum cult did. And nobody sensible believed that Saddam had, or was close to having a nuclear weapon.

Bush and Blair deliberately embarked on a fudging strategy so that these quite mild claims would be understood as consituting a mortal threat to the US. That's misleading the public. They only managed to do it because of the fear created by 911.

So to all the righties who are still out to lunch, here's some questions:

What real, direct threat would Saddam possessing battlefield munitions and perhaps some biological agent actually (in the real world) pose to the US and Britain?

The answer is no credible threat. He lacked the delivery mechanisms.

What evidence was there that Saddam posed a threat to his neighbours?

The answer is none. He knew very well what would happen to him if he tried to do another Kuwait and his army was in tatters anyway. Most of them opposed the invasion, so they must have been really scared.

What evidence was there that Saddam would give WMDs to "terrorists".

The answer is that there was no real evidence and, indeed, all the evidence points to the opposite since Saddam would be unlikely to arm people who were dedicated to his own destruction.

What evidence was there of Saddam having or being close to having a nuclear weapon?

The answer is none. Before 911 no sensible person believed that he did. There was a National Security conference in the States not long before 911, attended by all the Intel Agencies and relevant parties, in which it was concluded that Iraq was no nuclear threat.

What evidence was there that chemical or biological weapons would be of any use to terrorists in attacking the United States?

Again, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. The amount of chemical agent required to affect a large number of people is so immense that it is unfeasible as a terrorist weapon. It only works if delivered by mass barrage as in WWI or the Iran-Iraq war (the only other times chem weapons have been used successfully). It is useless as a terrorist weapon as the Aum cult showed when they released Sarin in an enclosed, crowded space and only managed to kill about a dozen people.

Bio weapons don't work either. The Anthrax guy killed five people, didn't he? Even if Iraq had something like smallpox, a mass vaccination campaign would make that a useless weapon too.

In any case, why would terrorists need Saddam for these things? The Aum cult manufactured its own Sarin and its own bio agents. And on a world scale they were nothing more than a nuisance.


In short, the right were out to lunch on this. It's one thing to say he had weapons, but another thing to say that Iraq was a realistic threat to anyone.