Hell, you started with a terrorist freedom fighter.
What did you expect? 
Its always puzzled me that nobody in the US seems to feel shame over this. This is not directed at you specifically, it just something that comes to mind when reading the comment.
I will say thought that, as far as crazy people go, there have been crazier, but the one in office is the one that’s doing things in your name and with your money and with the power afforded by this society and the one for which there is hope that he may yet be stopped.
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I’ll say this about their intervention in Latin America, it WAS effective.
Actually a number of us do feel shame over Andrew Jackson’s behavior. Pretty much everyone with much understanding of it, I hope.
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That way the Koch brothers can actually eat the children of the poor. Metaphors are for the weak!
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Perhaps for once he really means to rein in the CIA and wants the public on his side. This time they really crossed a line. What happened to foreign victims may be against lofty ideals, but intelligence agencies that are out of control domestically are a sign of serious dysfunction.
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I have wondered how Obama and his buddy Bush thought they could get away with illegally imprisoning people and killing US citizens and others without a trial or really anything other than a list labelled “Kill These Folks”.
Well I’ll be damned if Obama didn’t re-instate LIFETIME protection for the President and his spouse and his kids from the Secret Service:
The fucking Former President Act … because it is hard to live peacalbly after killing and torturing if you aren’t a dictator for life.
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It’s a sad state of affairs, but every U.S. President in history has given a free pass to the sins of the guys who came before him. It’s not hard to figure out why none of them much like the idea of setting that precedent.
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I wonder if in hindsight it would have been better if Nixon had gone to prison. I realize that it would have been a very painful decision and I am not surprised that he didn’t, but that might have gone a long way towards promoting a culture of accountability.
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Nixon was hardly the first to abuse his power, he was just the first to face impeachment. Even Lincoln suspended the writ of Habeus Corpus during the Civil War. It’s hard to do something more unconstitutional than that.
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“Folks” is way better than priming the pump by calling them “terrorists”, or “illegal combatants”, or some other construction designed to remove their humanity.
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What do you mean, “we,” Kemo Sabe?
“We tortured some folks.” And future torturers will not be discouraged from doing it again because even Obama says, "we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” Close the Justice Dept because we’re only going to look forward, not backwards.
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From the Reuters article:
“It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had,” [Obama] said. “A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.”
Here Obama was speaking in defense of the Japanese soldiers who were convicted of torturing Allied POWs after WWII. They did some regrettable things, but who can blame them? Working hard under enormous pressure. Tough job. Patriots.
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Actually I think that wording was the right call for someone speaking as a representative of the United States government. Just like “we committed unthinkable acts of genocide against Native Americans” or “we allowed slavery to persist far too long” or “we imprisoned Japanese Americans without due process during WWII” or “we put a man on the moon.”
Americans as a group share the pride or the shame for our collective actions, even if many of us spoke out against them as individuals.
Now if he actually did something meaningful to prevent such abuses from happening again instead of just acting sorry about them I’d be much happier.
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I think your mistake was thinking that we were the good guys. Really, we never have been - though we do make some pretty speeches. Pretty much we have ways been this.
oh, and libertarians are the bunk.
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It’s important to remember that he is obligated (and has been, since 2009), under the UN Convention Against Torture, to officially investigate allegations of torture. Reminding the world that “we tortured some folks” also reminds many that he has ignored his responsibility to investigate the people who ordered and approved the torture. But politics trumps the rule of law. Even the very best laws.
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Well, he’s also been quite up front about talking about ongoing investigations and that waterboarding was used illegally. This is just the first time he’s said “yes, it was torture, and it was unacceptable”. I don’t think we should assume that no investigations have taken place.
‘We tortured some folks.’ Who, Marge Gunderson? Jerry Lundegaard?
While I appreciate the admission, I think ‘folks’ is a way of soft-pedaling the situation. People were tortured. Call them people to formally acknowledge their humanity rather than the forced friendly intimacy that ‘folks’ implies.
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and @Kevin_Harrelson
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