Off the Cuff

Confession

I must be honest. The reason why I started a blog was to stimulate my writing muse.

Bush Flashback

Bush Flashback: “War Crimes Will Be Prosecuted…It Will Be No Defense To Say, ‘I Was Just Following Orders’”

Just before launching his invasion of Iraq, President Bush went on national television to issue an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein, urging him to leave his country within 48 hours. Bush also had this message for “all Iraqi military and civilian personnel”:

War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, “I was just following orders.”

Watch it:

George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley argues that this statement by Bush shows that “he and his administration knew that there is no ‘good faith defense’ in committing war crimes.”

Think Progress » Poll: 71 percent believe that waterboarding is torture.

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 Poll: 71 percent believe that waterboarding is torture..

Greg Sargent notes that despite the media's reluctance to describe it as such, a new poll out today by the New York Times and CBS News found that 71 percent of Americans consider waterboarding to be "a form of torture"

However, discussing torture on CBS's Face the Nation today, McCain insisted, "We've got to move on" and ignore the Bush administration's torture program. Indeed, McCain refused to support the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee -- even as he acknowledged that Bybee had broken both U.S. and international law in authorizing torture:

MCCAIN: He falls into the same category as everybody else as far as giving very bad advice and misinterpreting, fundamentally, what the United States is all about, much less things like the Geneva Conventions. Look, under President Reagan we signed an agreement against torture. We were in violation of that.

Think Progress

Poll: 69 percent approve of Obama, highest ?right track? numbers in six years.

-- "Fifty-eight percent approve of Obama's work on the economy."

-- "Obama leads the Republicans in Congress in trust to handle the economy by a garish 61-24 percent."

-- "A remarkable 90 percent say Obama is 'willing to listen to different points of view'; fewer than half said that about George W. Bush."

-- Seventy-seven "percent call Obama a strong leader, nearly matching Bush's best a few months after 9/11." From: Think Progress

Secessionist Gov. Rick Perry asks for federal help to deal with swine flu.

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Gov. Rick Perry today in a precautionary measure requested the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide 37,430 courses of antiviral medications from the Strategic National Stockpile to Texas to prevent the spread of swine flu. Currently, three cases of swine flu have been confirmed in Texas. From: Think Progress

Observation.....

I find it interesting that each service that allows you to cross post over a multiple number of social networks are in incomplete. They tend to miss one or more of the social networks.

Is it me?

Is it me or is there something sick about videotaping and photographing the torture of prisoners? Particularly since there was some question of the legality of torture.  

Image via CrunchBase

Checking out Zemanta for blogging. Finding it interesting and a useful tool.

Image by Renegade98 via Flickr

Tapped makes a great point about Rep. Hoekstra WSJ op-ed:

Hoekstra also eliminates the context of Blair's remarks in order to misrepresent them -- Blair concluded that "the bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security," which is a substantially different takeaway from the idea that torture was more valuable than the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA put together.

Hoekstra argues that "it was not necessary to release details of the enhanced interrogation techniques, because members of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of them since the program began in 2002." He adds that "it appeared that Mr. Obama understood it would be unfair to prosecute U.S. government employees for carrying out a policy that had been fully vetted and approved by the executive branch and Congress." So Hoekstra believes the government is entitled to break the law in secret as long as it does so by committee.

Hoekstra never acknowledges that the "enhanced interrogations" constituted torture, because then he'd have to argue that government officials are above the law. But that's essentially what he's arguing anyway.