BF2S Forums DAST Chat

article linked in EE Chats wrote:

he was shot twice and was in six separate IED explosions as his unit, Charlie company of SEAL Team Three, saw significant combat across the country.

The action was enough that the members of the unit adopted the white skull of the gun-wielding comic book vigilante The Punisher.

They painted the symbol on their body armor, their vehicles and even their weapons.

Jay wrote:

Macbeth wrote:

Jay wrote:

Nah, I just know that you're a troll, and MacBeth is still in his rebellious I hate everything popular in my age group phase.

Like I said on the page before the last- I don't agree with his economic, social, or foreign policy positions. At least Obama meets me on two of those. Though I do indeed find Paul bots annoying.

Which two does Obama meet you on? Surely not economy, because he's done more harm than good since he took office. Surely not social, since he's spent much of his administration cracking down on pot suppliers in California, keeping Bush era Guantanimo Bay open while increasing the erosion of civil liberties since the PATRIOT ACT took place. So that leaves offensive war as the thing you must really dig about Obama. Expansion in Afghanistan and intervention in Libya. Awesome.

Everyone bitches about how Republicans and Democrats are just two sides of the same coin, and then when, they truly get a different choice, they try to destroy it. Par for the course I guess.

Spearhead wrote:

Jay wrote:

Macbeth wrote:

Like I said on the page before the last- I don't agree with his economic, social, or foreign policy positions. At least Obama meets me on two of those. Though I do indeed find Paul bots annoying.

Which two does Obama meet you on? Surely not economy, because he's done more harm than good since he took office. Surely not social, since he's spent much of his administration cracking down on pot suppliers in California, keeping Bush era Guantanimo Bay open while increasing the erosion of civil liberties since the PATRIOT ACT took place. So that leaves offensive war as the thing you must really dig about Obama. Expansion in Afghanistan and intervention in Libya. Awesome.

Everyone bitches about how Republicans and Democrats are just two sides of the same coin, and then when, they truly get a different choice, they try to destroy it. Par for the course I guess.

The argument could be made that Obama is merely mitigating what was already a disastrous economy.  Would Ron Paul have saved it in four years?  I fucking doubt it.  When it comes to Afghanistan, he had to send troops, as would any other president, especially after Stanley "Bite Me" McChrystal went around his back and bitched for more troops than he was already getting.

On Libya..... I believe much of it was driven by our presence in the middle east, before, and in the context of, the Arab Spring.  Most of it came down to the very existence of NATO, and domestically the right wing hawk bitching. First about not intervening, then about not having boots on the ground, then to letting the civil war last too long.  I do not think the American public was "sold" at all on Libya but when you put it in the context of international/domestic politics, Obama handled it like a pro (no Americans dead, regime change, zero lasting burden with the aftermath). 

All you need to do is listen to Daniel Ellsberg (fairly qualified person) speak about how domestic politics influences foreign policy, and you may see that Obama turned what would have been a lose-lose situation into a propaganda victory.

And he got us out of Iraq, something which may end up costing him politically, but was the right thing to do.  The hawks are already on his ass for that one (as if another 30 years there would have been enough time).  But simultaneously, according to them, he does not deserve credit because Bush was the one who made the deal.  All the while chewing him out for obliging by it! 

Please BF2s, tell me how I'm wrong!  /FLAMESUIT ON

Back in 2007, when Barack Obama was running for president, a mildly surprising bit of news emerged: He and Dick Cheney were eighth cousins. Today, though, it appears that report was wrong. Judging from Obama's record in office, the two are practically brothers.

As a candidate, Obama criticized the last administration for holding Americans as enemy combatants without trial. He faulted it for wiretapping citizens without a warrant. He rejected the Republican claim that the president has the "inherent power" to go to war without congressional consent. He depicted George W. Bush and his vice president as a menace to constitutional limits and personal freedom.

But look at him now. Last week, Obama signed a bill letting him detain U.S. citizens in military custody without convicting them of anything — not for a month or a year, but potentially forever.

Obama pledges he will never use that power to hold an American. But Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said the bill originally applied only to noncitizens. Citizens were included, he said, at the request of the White House. Even if Obama doesn't plan to use the power, it will be sitting on the shelf for Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum.

Those who voted for Obama in 2008 expected something different. "The detention of American citizens, without access to counsel, fair procedure, or pursuant to judicial authorization, as enemy combatants is unconstitutional," he told The Boston Globe.

His reversal brings to mind not only Cheney but another Republican. "Obama has eclipsed Nixon in the establishment of an imperial presidency," George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told me. And Turley voted for Obama.

There is plenty of evidence for that conclusion. Last year, Obama ordered a drone strike in Yemen to kill radical Muslim Anwar al-Awlaki — a U.S. citizen. The administration claimed it had the legal authority to obliterate him, as well as evidence that al-Awlaki was engaged in active hostilities. But you'll have to take Obama's word, because he refused to make all this information public.

The targeted killing was justified by a secret legal memo that, The New York Times reported, "provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war."

And the evidence that al-Awlaki was plotting terrorist attacks, not merely spouting anti-American propaganda? Sorry, also secret. It's possible to make a case that he posed a clear threat to American lives and that the missile was the only feasible way to avert it. But Obama, the vaunted champion of openness, saw no need to bother.

In some ways, though, the president has been perfectly transparent. Note his transparent disregard for both the Constitution and federal law in launching a military attack against Libya.

The Constitution explicitly places the power to authorize war with Congress, not the president. But Obama refused to ask Congress to grant its approval beforehand — something even George W. Bush did as he prepared to invade Iraq.

Obama also defied the War Powers Resolution, which requires the president to get congressional authorization within 60 days or withdraw. His preposterous position was that the law didn't apply because we were not engaged in "hostilities." All this was particularly novel coming from someone who, as a candidate, suggested that emperors are for other countries. "The president," he insisted, "does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

Libya, however, had neither attacked us nor posed any discernible threat. President Obama exercised a presidential power that Candidate Obama said he doesn't have.

The candidate also denounced the Bush-Cheney administration for unauthorized surveillance of Americans in the U.S. But when an Islamic charity sued after being illegally wiretapped in 2004, Obama's Justice Department took the side of the wiretappers.

It argued in court that the lawsuit should be dismissed because it involved state secrets and refused to turn over evidence that the presiding judge demanded. He ruled that the wiretaps violated federal law and accused the administration of advocating "unfettered executive branch discretion" that invites "governmental abuse and overreaching."

The judge is only one of those who have vigorously faulted Obama's handling of executive power and civil liberties. If the president needs to hear a more sympathetic view, he might call Dick Cheney.

Kmar wrote:

Who proposed and passed that bill? I'd like to see the actual rundown on the votes.. and not just some ambiguously worded "the whitehouse requested it".. how do you even track that?

Kmar wrote:

Who proposed and passed that bill? I'd like to see the actual rundown on the votes.. and not just some ambiguously worded "the whitehouse requested it".. how do you even track that?

Spearhead wrote:

Kmar wrote:

Who proposed and passed that bill? I'd like to see the actual rundown on the votes.. and not just some ambiguously worded "the whitehouse requested it".. how do you even track that?

Obama said he would veto the defense bill but Congress had enough to push it through regardless.  I rank that guy as full of shit.

Jay wrote:

Kmar wrote:

Who proposed and passed that bill? I'd like to see the actual rundown on the votes.. and not just some ambiguously worded "the whitehouse requested it".. how do you even track that?

Last edited by Jay (2012-01-05 23:13:50)