http://firedoglake.com/2009/06/08/breaking-lieberman-graham-dropped-from-supplemental/

Also just in (today), Obama is fighting the relase of any information surrounding the CIA videotapes of their interrogation/torture sessions with certain prisoners, including who ordered the tapes destroyed, what the tapes revealed, etc.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/08/AR2009060804117.html?hpid=topnews

…well, I wasn’t actually going to do it. But since you kept it up, I’m going to go club a baby seal now. That baby seal blood is on your hands. Next time try not being such a dick, and maybe more baby seals will live.

You’re like Guilianni invoking 9/11 in every sentence. Be afraid. Be afraid.

You’re just some jerk off on a blog.

And Patraeus is just some general in the US military. He said we should release the photos too. But you’re not very consistent about argument, are you? If you were, you’d be attacking Patraeus with the same self-righteous indignation and superiority you’re laying on me. But you’re not, which means you’re really going after me personally.

talking to you makes me want to throw a bag of aluminum cans in the dumpster and clear cut a few acres of rain forest, just to piss you off.

Well, at least you admit where your priorities really are. Do the wrong thing just in hopes that it pisses me off.

The photos are going to be released eventually. If Obama doesn’t do it willingly, the courts will force him to release the photos at some point. Obama knows that. He is stalling because he has been advised by the Prime Minister of Iraq that releasing the photos now would be at best counterproductive, and at worst a bloody disaster resulting in hundreds (thousands?) of additional deaths and a significant increase in danger to Americans still stationed in Iraq. So Obama wants them released later, instead of now. To save lives. The Prime Minister didn’t say Iraqis would “protest.” He said they would kill people. Not protest. Kill. And he’s probably right. You call Obama a “coward” for listening to the advice of the Prime Minister of Iraq, but you’re not the one who America entrusted to make these decisions. You can sit on your couch with your thumb up your ass and and be a self-righteous, indignant dick, and (fortunately) there are no real world consequences. If Obama says “to hell with the consequences,” people die. Obama has to look the Prime Minister of Iraq and say “sorry, I know this is going to destabilize your country and set your security efforts back dramatically, but darn it, it’s just really important that people see these photos.” You don’t. You’re just some jerk off on a blog. Thank God he’s calling the shots, and not you.

And regardless of your smokescreen, you are still wrong about any potential to “prosecute” Obama under international law for not pursuing legal action against torturers, which was my original point, and which you haven’t addressed in the last 100 posts or so. You have done a nice job of changing the subject to avoid looking like an idiot, but you could have accomplished that by just recognizing that you were wrong. That would have been much more respectable.

I’m through debating the merits of this with you becuase you are incapable of having a civilized discussion. It is people like you who create conservatives. Seriously, talking to you makes me want to throw a bag of aluminum cans in the dumpster and clear cut a few acres of rain forest, just to piss you off.

Oh. My. God.

Get off your high horse. You’re telling me that I didn’t know that there would be Iraqis who would start protesting the moment these photos went public? That’s you’re big “Ha! Gothca!”?? Really??? From Josh’s link, the photos include:

a male uniformed US soldier receiving oral sex from a female prisoner, a government contractor engaged in an act of sodomy with a male prisoner, and penetration involving phosphorous sticks and brooms

Which was pretty much the sort of shit I figured would be in the photos given what we saw from previous Abu Graib photos.

So, please. Get over yourself. People should be protesting shit like this. Americans and Iraqis should be pissed that these bastards, including the bastards who authorized this shit, haven’t all been hauled to court.

If these bastards were all in court the day the photos were released, there’d be protest and angry crowds in Iraq, but there wouldn’t be anything we would need to worry about. But since Obama is acting like a political coward and giving us the “look forward, not back” bullshit, of course people are going to go apeshit when they see the stuff that he has been telling us isn’t worth criminal prosecutions. They are. Obama’s lying.

I think Obama has a rare combination of outstanding policy judgment and political savvy, and when he supports a policy that I don’t agree with, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt

I’m not interested in your hero worship. Save your “Mistakes were made” speech for the choir. Obama is human just like everyone else. And he screws up, just like everyone else. And he’s screwing this one up badly, just like a lot of cowardly american politicians currently are.

all things considered, he’s probably the best President we’re ever going to get.

Keep brown-nosing Obama. Maybe he’ll give you a gummint job. For those dealing with reality, saying Obama is “the best we got” isn’t the same as sayign Obama is doing this particular thing right. He isn’t. His “look forward, don’t look back” is political cowardice. His push to bury these photos is political cowardice. His actions on this subject are immoral and indefensible. Obama should release the photos and start criminal cases against everyone involved.

I tend to get a little peeved. Especially when that someone is a liberal who ought not bite the hand that is feeding him.

Oh get over yourself and stop pretending like this is a purely left-wing extremist point of view. In Josh’s link in post#283, General Patreaus was in favor of releasing the photos, “lets lance this boil” being his sound bite for it.

You think Patreaus didn’t know the repurcusions either? You wanna keep portraying Obama as the only one who knows jack shit? You wanna talk up Obama as the most brillian man on planet earth right now? You’re talking like a shill at this point.

Here you go. This is a small taste of what Obama knew, that you didn’t.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090601/wl_mcclatchy/3243795

You may now return to your regularly scheduled panic attack, keep behaving as though you know everything, and continue undermining the man who is by far the greatest President in either of our lifetimes.

By the way, I’m a lawyer. I understand the difference between information that can be presented in a court of law to support a conviction, and information that can’t serve such a purpose, but is otherwise reliable. And I understand that it is entirely plausible that the United States is holding prisoners of war for legitimate reasons that would not reliably support a conviction in U.S. court. And if Barack Obama tells me that is the case, I have absolutely no reason to believe otherwise.

If you can read my posts and honestly think it’s possible that I voted for Bush, you’re an idiot. I consider myself to be well to the left of the Democratic party…so much so that I have difficulty bringing myself to vote for Democrats at times. But every President I have ever voted for has been a Democrat.

But I’m also not an ideologue who aligns myself with the far left for the sake of doing so. I’m willing to listen to an opposing argument, for what it may be worth. When it comes to national security, I think Barack Obama more or less has it right, and I believe that he is doing what he can to maintain American ideals and maximize our safety within the political context in which he must operate. (And let’s not forget that — you and I have the freedom to say whatever the hell we want and support whatever position we feel is right, whereas Obama has to actually work with others to get things done…see, e.g., the Guantanamo Bay closure fiasco, in which he is trying to do the right thing and is being stabbed in the back by his own party).

I think Obama has a rare combination of outstanding policy judgment and political savvy, and when he supports a policy that I don’t agree with, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, because I know that (1) Obama is privy to information that I’m not aware of; (2) Obama is smarter than I am (and a hell of a lot smarter than you are); and (3) when Obama makes decisions, he has very good reasons behind them. That isn’t to say that he’s infallible — he is going to make mistakes…maybe even make mistakes that I wouldn’t have made if I were in his position…but all things considered, he’s probably the best President we’re ever going to get. So when someone accuses him of being a war criminal out of absolute ignorance and a total inability/unwillingness to understand the basic tenets of international law, I tend to get a little peeved. Especially when that someone is a liberal who ought not bite the hand that is feeding him.