If Bush Did It

Following up on my earlier commentary on Obama’s push to codify his illegal killing regime, it turns out Kevin Gosztola of Firedoglake used that New York Times report to attack Mitt Romney as some kind of a neocon warmonger-in-waiting. See, ” Obama Administration Was Not Willing to Trust Romney With a Secret Kill List .” Having posted on the topic, I called out Gosztola on Twitter. Typical leftist hypocrite couldn’t defend his own writing and instead resorted to childishly calling me a “whackjob.” Whackjob RT @ ampowerblog Why give Obama a pass? is.gd/KNTBE6 Beef of that story is buried in your piece and you know it — Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) November 25, 2012 I also pointed out that progressives called for Bush-Cheney war crimes prosecutions under the incoming Obama administration: @ kgosztola Remember how Bush/Cheney were war criminals and all that? If you believe, Obama’s 100 times worse. is.gd/KNTBE6 #Drones — Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 25, 2012 And no surprise, but it was Gosztola himself who was leading the charge to put Dick Cheney on trial. See this one of many entries at Firedoglake, ” Torture Decriminalized: How the State Department Provides Space for the Culpables’ Book Tours “: Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who should be investigated and tried for war crimes that include but are not limited to torture and abuse of detainees, has mounted a tour to publicize his memoir In My Time. Waterboarding has historically been considered torture and a war crime yet he is able to go on Dateline on NBC News and tell Jamie Gangel that he would strongly support using it again. He is also able to go on and express support for wiretapping and secret prisons, which seem to be mechanisms an authoritarian and not a democratic society would use. That post then goes on to attack the Obama administration for not mounting prosecutions against the Bush-Cheney cabal. This was a common refrain on the radical left at the time of election in 2008, that a new administration should not close the book on the past. Leftists argued that the Bush administration should be brought before the bar of history, with progressives attacking President-elect Obama’s pledge “to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” Here’s more from Gosztola’s post : In July 2008, the New York Times published an editorial on the “disturbing victory” the Bush administration had won when a federal appeals court ruled the administration could “continue to detain Ali Al-Marri,” who had “been held for more than five years as an enemy combatant.” They noted the “sweeping power” could deprive citizens as well as noncitizens of freedom. Al-Marri, a Qatar citizen, was legally residing in the US. He was arrested in Peoria, Illinois, on “ordinary criminal charges” and seized and imprisoned by the military. The evidence in support of his secret detention was based on “thin hearsay evidence” and also based on the fact that he had been in an army and carried arms on a battlefield, which makes it even more difficult to celebrate al-Marri as a case that is an example of the Obama administration’s efforts to renew respect for the rule of law. What the letter plainly shows is the contempt the State Department and Obama administration has for addressing the lawlessness of the Bush administration. With Cheney’s book tour to defend torture underway, the letter takes on even more significance. He is someone, who is culpable for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet, it is next to impossible to mount a prosecution when the Obama administration has decriminalized the Bush administration torture regime by arguing steps have been taken to leave behind that unsavory past. It’s hypocrisy all the way down with these idiots. As I pointed out earlier, the fact is, from the left ‘s human rights perspective, the Obama administration’s national security policies are exponentially more grievous than any U.S. administration in history. But all the anti-Bush agitation was never about human rights or humanitarian international law. It was about raw power and revenge against political enemies. If progressives truly cared about human rights abuses we should be seeing antiwar protests across the globe, on the scale of the protests on the eve of the Iraq war in 2003. President Obama himself campaigned in 2008 as the most far-left candidate since George McGovern, but since taking office has eliminated virtually nothing from the Bush administration’s national security program. Indeed, Fox News confirmed that the CIA was holding prisoners at the Obama administration’s black site in Benghazi. What’s worse is that Obama’s secret prisons are in violation of his own administration’s executive order abolishing extraordinary rendition and secret overseas prisons. People like Kevin Gosztola know all of this, but in the service of progressive power are not only giving the president a pass on the massive illegality of the kill list regime, but have in fact aided and abetted a cover-up of the Benghazi murders to perpetuate Democrat power in Washington. That’s the real crime here. The historical fucking moral bankruptcy of the left, people who will stop and nothing to keep political power, and thus expand the vicious leftist power grab in government even if innocent people are killed.

Link:
FDL’s Kevin Gosztola Wanted Bush-Cheney War Crimes Prosecutions But Gives Obama a Pass on Unprecedented Violations of International Law