Dave Schultz, Tie Domi, Bob Probert...

April 7, 2006 11:01 AM

Cofer Black, Director of the CIA Counterterrorism center until May 2002 said before the 9/11 commission: “All I want to say is that there was ‘before’ 9/11 and ‘after’ 9/11. After 9/11 the gloves come off… ‘No Limits’ aggressive, relentless, worldwide pursuit of any terrorist who threatens us is the only way to go…” Since that time there have been allegations of abduction and indefinite detention in secret prisons abroad , abuse in prisons within the U.S. and the suppression of evidence of coercion overseas in confessions in U.S. courts. (Ahmed Omar Abu Ali prev. here). In addition to Amnesty Int’l, it’s getting the U.S. some UN attention as well.
posted by Smedleyman (30 comments total)

9/11 changed everything!

Except those things it didn't change.

I am very ashamed of the things this administration does in my name and with my money.
posted by nofundy at 11:36 AM on April 7, 2006

This thing has a momentum all it's own; don't expect any future administration to change anything very quickly.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 11:39 AM on April 7, 2006

I'm sick of all this 'after 9/11' B.S. You can't be totally safe and resonably moral at the same time. And you also can't ever be totally safe.

So you might as well strive for resonably moral.
posted by delmoi at 11:50 AM on April 7, 2006

The scary part, as they take off their gloves, is their ability to classify someone as a terrorist according to their standards. Even the cop shows now include dialogue to the effect "All we have to do is say the word terrorist and your rights are out the window." I contend this is not anti-establishment paranoia . . . this is the re-introduction of something sinister in the land of the free.
Do we have any legal beagles among us who can outline the parameters of who can be named a terrorist?
posted by ahimsakid at 11:55 AM on April 7, 2006

any sane Democrat should stay the hell away from this thing -- they'll just get painted as terrahist-lovers. hence, torture away, and have fun with the brown peoples.
it's interesting that Bush got all he wanted when it comes to foreign policy -- he's been successfully attacked only once when it comes to post-911 security. for the port deal.

when it comes to foreign policy, he's only vulnerable from the right. arguing the sand Negroes case won't take you anywhere
posted by matteo at 11:57 AM on April 7, 2006

"any sane Democrat should stay the hell away from this thing -- they'll just get painted as terrahist-lovers."

How the hell did we end McCarthyism?
posted by Richard Daly at 12:04 PM on April 7, 2006

9/11 changed everything!

- The Bill Of Rights is now seen as a problem
- Everyone hates us
- Terrorist recruitment is up
- We're going bankrupt
- Iraq is the new Vietnam
- The president has unlimited power
- Government growth is up
- Effective response to emergencies is down
posted by y6y6y6 at 12:17 PM on April 7, 2006

“...when it comes to foreign policy, he's only vulnerable from the right...”

I take your point matteo, but I still think of the 2000 South Carolina primary.
posted by Smedleyman at 12:34 PM on April 7, 2006

How is this not like a double post a thousand times over? All you did was take a bunch of stuff we have discussed ad nauseum and put them together in another post?
posted by dios at 12:38 PM on April 7, 2006

regarding UN attention: "You know what the UN should do? They should sanction me. Sanction me, with their army. OH! They don't have an army! You should the fuck up then, I know that's what I'd do, if I didn't have no army.... you need to SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP. Go sell some medicine bitches!
posted by illovich at 12:39 PM on April 7, 2006

Pay no attention to dios. He gets a little cranky when he can't derail new material.
posted by kaemaril at 12:57 PM on April 7, 2006

I can't read the name of the subject of this post without the "Abu Ben Adam" poem running through my head.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:09 PM on April 7, 2006

Much the same thing and many worse things happened during WWII. I'd like to see the comparisons and above all, how long afterwards it took to get back to normal. Everyone knows about the Japanese internment camps but I just heard about the many german and italian citizen internment camps around the country. One of the differences as I see it was that the Civil Defense was pretty much an independent civilian authority. Correct me if I'm wrong.
posted by JJ86 at 1:11 PM on April 7, 2006

How the hell did we end McCarthyism?

you only think you did.
;)

basically, McCarthy did end himself -- he drank himself into oblivion. clearly, he hadn't discovered Jesus
posted by matteo at 1:18 PM on April 7, 2006

;)^H^H
posted by sonofsamiam at 1:20 PM on April 7, 2006

dios
*sigh*

Well, the Ahmed Omar Abu Ali thing is an update, but the Amnesty Int’l report was released April 5, and it didn’t show up on MeFi as far as I’ve seen so it couldn’t have been discussed.
The other links are indicative of the overall pattern, but I could have just posted the single Amnesty Int’l report.
(Naturally, I’d get the “one link” criticism)
It’s fairly compehensive and I think provides a great deal of proof that those activities occured. Other discussions notwithstanding, that in and of itself seems important. There’s a great deal of documentation there as well. One could spend a good chunk of time going through the references...if one were inclined to read things.
It very much changed my thinking on the whole matter.
Documentation will do that.
posted by Smedleyman at 1:27 PM on April 7, 2006

Democrats should start eating babies. That way they won't seem soft on terrorism .
posted by srboisvert at 1:31 PM on April 7, 2006

Damn, and this discussion was going along so well, too. At least for the first 9 comments or so.
Thanks for the post Smedleyman.
posted by Balisong at 1:32 PM on April 7, 2006

Dave Schultz, Tie Domi, Bob Probert...

No Tiger Williams?
posted by loquax at 1:33 PM on April 7, 2006

I was thinking Ogie Ogilthorpe, but I didn’t know how many folks would get the reference.
posted by Smedleyman at 1:40 PM on April 7, 2006

Ha! Good one...
posted by loquax at 1:42 PM on April 7, 2006

I heard he was deported to Canada, but they wouldn't take him back.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:42 PM on April 7, 2006

I got a kick out of reading that even Al Gore is open to some, ahem, creative measures:

The first time I proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Clinton had seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, "That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass."
posted by Brian James at 1:46 PM on April 7, 2006

Less attention centered on the phrase "rapid development of new programs" and what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people.

posted by If I Had An Anus at 2:03 PM on April 7, 2006

The UN thing bothers the hell out of me. Extremely sticky. Apart from the fact that these kinds of abuses are an affront to humanity everywhere - you have the UN special rapporteur saying these are crimes under international law. So how will it be enforced? What sort of problems will this cause?
The US State Department says the UN criticism of Gitmo is unfounded because UN officials never went there. But also refused to let them go there.
Internally there’s a whole bunch of issues of course, but “it's a dangerous development and the UN expert fears that Washington's moves may encourage other countries to interpret the international torture ban more loosely.”

Something that keeps coming back to me - when you are a leader you have an obligation to hold yourself to the highest standard and encourage others to do the same. I love the US, we are world leaders, and we should be the world's bastion of democracy and human rights. The lowering of our standards, this “drop the gloves” attitude, seems to reduce international political relations to might makes right.

What worries me is that we may not always have the might. Where do we find the meaning in what we did then? How is being an American than different from being German or French or Chinese?
(Or Romulan? )
posted by Smedleyman at 2:12 PM on April 7, 2006

We're all Romulans, fighting the Klingon hordes. Or is it the Remes?
posted by Balisong at 2:30 PM on April 7, 2006

The lowering of our standards, this “drop the gloves” attitude, seems to reduce international political relations to might makes right.

Yeah. Instead of:

"walk softly and carry a big stick"

it's:

"stomp around like a gap-toothed imbecile and carry something so big you can't really lift it"
posted by tkchrist at 4:57 PM on April 7, 2006

excellent Balkinization post on the powers they think they have to do all this: ... This theory, taken to its logical conclusions, gives the President the ability to treat anyone living in the United States, including particularly U.S. citizens, as wartime enemies without having to prove their disloyalty to anyone outside the executive branch. In so doing, it offers him what can only be called dictatorial powers-- that is, the power to suspend ordinary civil liberties protections on his say so. The limits on what the President may do under this theory are entirely political-- the question is whether the American people will stand for what the President has done if they discover what he has done in their name. But if the American people don't know what their executive is doing, they can hardly be in a position to object. And so the President has tried to keep secret exactly what he has done under the unreasonable and overreaching theory of Presidential power that his Administration has repeatedly asserted in its legal briefs and public statements. ...
posted by amberglow at 2:24 PM on April 8, 2006

"The first time I proposed a snatch"

Is Al talking about when he and Tipper got engaged?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 2:50 PM on April 8, 2006

right now CSPAN is rerunning testimony by Gonzales--he refuses to rule out grabbing any person on US soil and rendering them to another country without any sort of due process--citizen or not. They've so far only done it at airports but he won't rule it out on a street or in a mall, etc. He admits too, they starting doing all this well before beginning to brief Congress on any of it, as the law requires.
posted by amberglow at 2:56 PM on April 8, 2006