FTFY
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when I wake up, and he hasn’t tweeted something confusing, that will be news.
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Oof, apparently reading comprehension is also not my strong suit. Thanks for clearing that up. Back to my ham.
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If I wake up and there’s absolutely nothing about him in the news, that will be news (to me).
Your turn.
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If I wake up in the news, and it’s about him… … … I got nothin’ 
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NO. Of the 122 people released from Gitmo that are described as having “returned to the fight”, 9 were released by Obama. I don’t offhand know the total number of Guantanamo prisoners released by Obama, but it’s a lot larger than 9.
Also note: I haven’t looked into this for many years now, but when the first Pentagon-approved lists of former Guantanamo detainees who “returned to the fight” were released they included people who had given interviews critical of (and hence undermining) the way the “War On Terror” was conducted. And, of course, some who after their release engaged in violence against us or our allies - which doesn’t prove they were militants before they spent years without rights imprisoned among militants.
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That is, if you define it as a “war.” That’s the whole trouble. I define it more as a crime. Maybe it’s a gray in between. As far as I know there was no attempt to take over our country’s government, or occupy our land. It was an attempt to terrorize people, which is awful and kills people and destroys property, but that’s all it did. Unfortunately we in the US allowed ourselves to be terrorized, and all the shit we see now is just the result of that. Our response was labeled a “war on terrorism,” and we sent troops in, and spent trillions of dollars, and guess what. Terrorism is still there. And part of it has been fueled by Guantanamo and the Iraq war, not to mention our history of meddling in the Mideast. We have seen our freedoms deteriorate in the past 15 years, and it’s all our own fault.
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Also, it’s awfully problematic to apply wartime rules - wars end (the Korean war notwithstanding). Wars involve states, and governments, and prisoner exchanges. We’re fighting an abstract noun; it’s not going to surrender, and it’s not clear whether we’ll ever declare victory.
Also: we’re not treating these people as prisoners of war, we’re calling them war criminals. Accused criminals, including accused war criminals, get trials, and then get defined (often harsh) penalties. Instead, these people are being held as if POWs until we’ve declared victory over an abstract noun, but they’re also being called criminals and then not given trials.
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This and the wiretapping accusations are all attempts by the White House to get back on the offensive - to control the narrative rather than have the spotlight focused on their ineptitude.
In fact, Trump needs Obama right now - to be the common ‘enemy’ and a place to point the finger so that his base supporters have a face to direct their anger at. Hillary is not good enough. The election is over so the campaign rhetoric no longer works. But now Trump can lay all blame on the Obama administration for every problem - imagined or real.
It’s all part of the propoganda war:
The right-wing media cannot survive without high-profile liberal villains who can be used to rile up the Republican masses. For the previous eight years, Obama was portrayed as an almost demonic figure bent on destroying the American way of life. And for the last two years of Obama’s term, Hillary Clinton received co-star status as America’s Villain on Fox News and in other right-wing media, which denounced her every move, real or imagined, as an outrage imagined, as an outrage.
Being outraged, and especially being outraged about made-up things, has been a signature of the far-right press for years. It certainly defined the Obama era, blossoming into Fox News’ entire programming blueprint. Fox News posted huge profits each year by overreacting to imagined Obama slights.
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It doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid, not if you want a country where the rule of law is respected.
You cannot declare war against organisations - wars take place between nation-states, and are governed by, among other things, the Geneva Conventions. Those seem to have gone right by the board here: either the detainees were combatants in Afghanistan and Iraq subject to the Conventions (and possibly war criminals subject to prosecution under those conventions), or they were civilian criminals (not because of their associations, but because of their actions) subject to criminal prosecution in a court of law.
The latter became impossible because most of these people were tortured for evidence, which thus became inadmissible and poisoned any possible criminal case - that’s a war crime whether or not they are considered combatants. There is also the fact that a fair number of detainees were neither combatants nor criminals, and were known to be neither, just people in the wrong place at the wrong time - a group of Uighurs escaping Chinese persecution comes to mind. They had a nice decade-long stay at Gitmo Hotel. To put it bluntly, Gitmo was doubling down on stupid.
Your Supreme Court went along with that? <shrug> In aggregate, they have been as dysfunctional and compromised as the rest of your government for some time now.
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[quote=“WarrenTerra, post:35, topic:96538”]Fox And Friends
{snip}
a morning newsertainment propaganda program designed to take homebound retirees with nothing better to do and wrap them in a consoling blanket of resentments, bigotries, and lies.
[/quote]
To be fair, Trump is, by age, gender, and race, exactly at the sweet spot of their target demographic…
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“Thanks Obama!”
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I can’t help but wonder if his love of frequent bullshitting is pathological or just standard operating procedure for holders of his office yet he lacks the rhetorical skill to make it less overt.
Either way if it is unusual maybe it’s safe to say this level of bullshitting is un-presidented?
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Yes, a lot of critics of the U.S. think that. A lot of those same critics, including Amnesty International, made friends with supporters of jihad. Strangely, they’re unable to ask their new friends to work on ending the jihad.
Then, not only did President Obama continue the system that was in place, he also continued getting us involved in more wars. Maybe your easy answers aren’t as easy as you think.
Our enemies define it as a war. Just because the women and children being killed, and now, enslaved, are being killed and enslaved in the Middle East, doesn’t make those enemies gray.
Only a few are considered war criminals. We’re calling them “detainees.” I realize that some people like to imagine this was something the Bush administration invented, but the Army manual they used has the name: Military Police: Enemy Prisoners of War, Retained Personnel, Civilian Internees and Other Detainees (AR 190-8).
Note the word “Detainees” right in the title. The writers of the Geneva Conventions understood that not every prisoner gets POW status. That’s why it was made clear that it only applies to some.
In fact, Common Articles 2 and 3 of the Conventions are about what types of wars should be covered. They well understood that not every enemy deserved its protections. They put that fine print in there for a reason.
Not really. Only a relative few got the rough treatment. None were actually harshly interrogated for courtroom evidence. That was handled by the FBI. This isn’t new either. During the Clinton administration, they called it a “clean team” and a “dirty team.”
That’s the way it’s always worked. Our Supreme Court isn’t supposed to write new laws. Congress is supposed to do that.
I have to go visit my mom next week. My step-father is pro-Trump and probably thinks anything Trump farts out of his mouth is pure gold. He probably will go on about how Obama released all these guys personally, key in hand.
Pray for me, fellow Boing-Boingers.
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Trump is higher than a kite 99% of the time. His only real bud, Spicer, provides it for him. Straight up kush with soma crushed up on top of the bowl. Good shit!!
Suggested wardrobe for your visit 
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And the rest are supposed to get a trial for whatever laws they supposedly broke.
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What’s the fallacy where you accuse me of something I never said? Yeah, you just did that.
I never said the answer was easy. Nothing dealing with large groups of people and high emotions is easy. But there are better answers and worse answer. Bush chose the worst answer, and the rest of the US establishment went along for the ride.
That’s the spirit! Play the victim card! That’s another fallacy, right?
Ok, two problems here.
- who cares what they call it. They can call it whatever they want, as long as they stop doing it.
- you’ve sprinted straight back into the them-vs-us enemies-at-war quagmire. They are criminals. What they do is a crime. That’s it.
This is just fucking WRONG. There is no class of person that the Geneva Conventions deprives of protections. None. Not a one. Not a single one. The Geneva Conventions explicitly recognises that everyone gets protections.
Edit: I recall you vigorously defending torture back in December, so it’s no surprise you’re also clueless about the GCs.
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