Rumsfeld and the New York Times

Donald Rumsfeld canceled his subscription to the New York Times in response to Paul Krugman's outburst of Bush Derangement Syndrome on September 11. I find Rumsfeld's reaction silly. Krugman has been writing columns for the Times for quite awhile, and he's been a member of the leftist fringe since he started. No one, including Rumsfeld, should have been surprised or shocked that Krugman put up a BDS-influenced post on 9/11. You can find the same sort of attitudes on various leftist sites.

When you read the New York Times you know what you are getting: one of the world's most prestigious newspapers that delivers the news through the lens of a liberal worldview. But despite the editorial bias, it delivers a huge volume of news, including much high-quality reporting. Like most papers, it has various columnists, some good, some bad, and some whose quality differs depending on the day and/or topic. When you read Paul Krugman on economic issues, you also know what you are getting. His largely one-note economic perspective can be educational as a contrast to approaches that are more likely to be in favor on the right. But when he writes about political topics, Krugman is nothing more than a typical, garden-variety leftist, rarely capable of making a serious argument, and useful only as an object of ridicule. I'm not sure why someone like Rumsfeld would even take him seriously. Canceling your subscription to the Times because of one idiotic post by Krugman is a silly overreaction that makes Rumsfeld look petty and thin-skinned, and inadvertently gives Krugman more stature than he deserves.

Dick Cheney's Memoir

Here's a surprise. A retired politician writes a self-serving memoir in which he gives his version of events, while criticizing others. I know, that's just so unusual. But in this case it's Dick Cheney, so the sputtering outrage has already started.

It's pretty funny to read all of the whining, the sniveling about so-called "war crimes," Halliburton, and all the other hatred directed at Cheney. As a general rule I tend to avoid political memoirs, because there are more interesting things to read than packs of lies. But all the attacks on Cheney are almost making me want to read his book. I suspect it will have that effect on a large number of people. Cheney will probably be laughing all the way to the bank as his critics help boost sales.

Leftist Finally Notices that Barack Obama is a Weak Leader

I was skimming some left-wing blogs for amusement and came across a post called, "A weak President," by Mark Kleiman of the laughably-named "The Reality-Based Community." Anyone paying attention has known for years now that Barack Obama is a weak leader, but Kleiman appears to have just figured it out. Not only that, but he employs the worst comparison possible in the world of BDS sufferers, linking Obama's behavior to that of the great Satan himself, George W. Bush.

Barack Obama sounds completely clueless. Clueless at the Bush level

. What is it that has Kleiman so riled up? Is it Obama's utter cluelessness on foreign policy, or some other major failing? Oh no. It's that Obama takes no responsibility for the treatment of the left's favorite traitor, Bradley Manning.

In left-wing world making a traitor -- oops, I mean great hero of the people -- sleep naked equates to "torture." Never mind that there appear to be valid reasons for Manning's treatment routine, since Obama is going along with it, that makes him ok with torture. And if he's allowing torture, then he equals Bush. That's what passes for reality in the "reality-based community."

BDS in Europe

Bush Derangement Syndrome is an extremely persistent disorder. You might have thought it would have subsided now that George W. Bush has been out of office for years. But it still rages among leftists worldwide. Terrorist-rights supporters apparently caused the cancellation of a Bush trip to Switzerland by trotting out the same old ridiculous calls for his arrest for "authorizing torture."

Over the last couple of years Switzerland has hosted, among others, both a Hamas official, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I don't recall any of these so-called human rights organizations that are after Bush for authorizing the waterboarding of a couple of terrorists being too concerned with those visits. An actual terrorist leader in Switzerland? No problem. How about the president of a country that brutally represses its own citizens and employs torture routinely? He's welcome anytime.

Terrorist Rights Supporters Dig Up Another Expert Who Agrees With Them

There's a Scott Horton interview of Malcom Nance in Harpers. According to the article, Nance is "An Arabic-speaking counterterrorism expert and a combat veteran with twenty-eight years of operational experience in the Middle East." Like some other experts, he has strong views on U.S. strategy vs. Al Qaeda. Horton uses this interview as a way to attack Marc Thiessen, a former Bush speechwriter who now writes an opinion column at the Washington Post. For those who don't know, Thiessen has been an outspoken and effective defender of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.  Naturally this has inspired intense hatred and attacks from terrorist rights supporters. But Horton tries a different tactic, the ever popular appeal to authority. Since experts, including those with first-hand knowledge,  disagree about the effectiveness of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques, you might think they cancel each other out. Not so to terrorist rights supporters. They only believe experts they agree with, and simply dismiss opposing views as politically-motivated. In case I'm accused of that myself, I'll point out that I hold open the possibility that enhanced interrogation was totally counterproductive, and didn't really obtain the crucial information claimed by former Bush administration officials. Most anti-torture extremists won't concede the reverse. Let's look at some things Nance says.

Al Qaeda’s ideology has little to do with traditional Islam. Some call it al-Qaedaism; I call it Bin Ladenism.

I'm  highly skeptical of that claim in that I think it goes too far. The Islamist ideology is a stream within Islam, a minority view to be sure, but it is still fundamentally justified by the religion.

we recognize, attack, and neutralize their central belief system using all political, diplomatic, intelligence, military, and economic tools. The starting point is therefore to drive a wedge between Al Qaeda and Islam. The Muslim world needs to understand that Al Qaeda’s ideology has nothing to do with the pillars of Islam. When Al Qaeda is isolated and recognized as a radical cult, it will lose the ability to generate new recruits.

That sounds good but is far easier said than done. If the vast majority of Muslims in countries where Al Qaeda operates could be convinced to stamp out the terrorists as a radical, perversion of Islam, that would be great. I advocated something similar.

Now we get to Nance's comments about the Bush era.

The entire eight-year effort under Bush targeted Americans, not the world or Al Qaeda supporters.

I think that's obvious nonsense that damages Nance's credibility. It's one thing to disagree with many of Bush's methods and actions, and another to make a ridiculous sweeping statement.

Bin Laden benefitted immensely from massive policy errors such as the invasion of Iraq.

That's highly debatable, especially given that we don't know what would have happened had the Iraq War never taken place.

circuit breaker is designed to reverse these losses and break Al Qaeda’s global base of support. Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, noted that losing the Muslim world’s support would utterly destroy Al Qaeda. This strategy, which would cost only a fraction of the hundreds of billions spent on military operations, would attack Al Qaeda in the realm of public opinion in the Islamic world and would reposition America and Americans as partners rather than an opponents.

I don't know what "circuit breaker" actually entails, but I'm extremely skeptical given his overstatements. Nance was a "master instructor in the SERE program." and Horton asks him about Thiessen justifying the use of waterboarding.

I spent twenty years in intelligence and four years in the SERE program waterboarding people before I ever opened my mouth on the subject. Marc Thiessen is a fool of the highest magnitude if he thinks he knows anything about waterboarding.

What was left of his credibility is rapidly disappearing.  

His claims are based not on first-hand experience but on a classified briefing from people with an agenda of justifying what was done.

Yeah, and Nance doesn't have an agenda. It's not necessary to have first-hand experience in order to evaluate results, or analyze the effectiveness of intelligence. But recognizing that would involve logic.

That makes Thiessen into a court stenographer for war criminals rather than a person with any real claim of expertise.

Anyone calling American leaders who acted in defense of the country "war criminals," because of their treatment of a couple of terrorists in time of war, is unworthy of respect, veteran or not.

Thiessen’s central purpose is apparently to glorify the most extreme practices used by the CIA in the Bush era and to argue that each of these practices, including waterboarding, is vitally necessary to our national security–even though no president used them before

So much for his expertise, which apparently doesn't extend to the history of the CIA, or to American use of torture techniques. Apparently he's never heard of the Philippine Insurrection or Teddy Roosevelt. This is typical of many anti-torture extremists, who have little understanding of history when they spout nonsense about torture being un-American.

Thiessen has no sense of honor and no moral compass.

People like Nance think their minority view on the use of torture is the only moral position, and feel free to demonize other Americans who disagree.

The use of waterboarding and other torture techniques was a powerful recruitment tool for Al Qaeda; it spawned thousands of would-be suicide bombers.

This type of unsubstantiated assertion is all too common from terrorist rights supporters. You'll hear it over and over again repeated as if it were fact. But in reality, people often tend to do things for various motives, and there's no way to measure what things were and are most important in recruiting Al Qaeda members. Religious fanaticism certainly seems to be a major factor. 

Nance attacks Thiessen's claim that waterboarding isn't torture. I agree with Nance that it is torture, so I have no argument there.

There is great opportunity to use the goodwill surrounding Obama, and particularly the fact that he was raised in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, to creating a new era in American-Islamic relations

That sounds like some serious wishful thinking. And Bush reached out to Islamic nations also. He's not proposing anything that sounds new. A "let's make them like us" policy is about the last thing we should embrace.

At the heart of my circuit breaker proposal is an effort to reframe America and Americans. Al Qaeda portrays us as Muslim-hating militarists. We need to be seen as a strategic partner in an effort to fend off a foe which is as much a challenge to Islam as it is to the West. Many leaders of the Muslim community desperately want this rapprochement. Our initial efforts against Al Qaeda were sound militarily but very clumsy on the field of public opinion. They have led to military successes, but those victories will be short-lived if we cannot win the struggle with Al Qaeda for hearts and minds.

It's possible Nance has some good ideas, but given some of what he says in this interview, I tend to doubt it. Also, the subtitle of his book includes the phrase, "restoring America's honor." America hasn't lost any honor that needs to be restored.    

Dept. Of Justice Dropping Witchhunt Against Bush Lawyers

Frustrated by their inability to get the highest members of the Bush administration, such as Dick Cheney and George W. Bush himself, terrorist rights supporters have focused on easier targets: former administration lawyers John Yoo and James Bybee. Although unable to criminalize their legal advice, they've been pushing a Justice department investigation, and hoping for professional sanctions. But apparently it won't happen.

Bush administration lawyers who paved the way for sleep deprivation and waterboarding of terrorism suspects exercised poor judgment but will not be referred to authorities for possible sanctions

The "poor judgment" verdict is a highly debatable opinion, but it should end the attempt to ruin the careers of these men for political purposes -- at least at the federal level. The hysterical outrage from the BDS crowd should be pretty amusing.

BDS Hero Whines About Lack of Profit

Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi who threw shoes at former President George W. Bush, is now whining that he hasn't made enough money off of the incident and is still poor.

In an interview with the Observer, Muntazer al-Zaidi said his only regret after spending nine months in prison – where he says he was repeatedly beaten by his jailers – was that he was still a relatively poor man. ... "I blame the media because they said I would become rich for doing what I did, that I would become a multi-millionaire," al-Zaidi said from Switzerland, where he is receiving treatment for several health problems.

As the Guardian article notes, his brothers "have hinted," that his assault on Bush was "premeditated." It sounds like he was looking to cash in. It's just too bad that his dreams haven't been realized. 

Naturally he regards himself as a hero.

"I become a famous name in all the free world not only for Muslims and Arabs, but in Europe," he said. "Everywhere people have received me like a hero, but the point is not the reception, the point is they believe in what I did. I feel very proud of what I did. I am happy I defended my country's dignity. All free people respect this.

"Free people" who aren't suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome think you are an idiot who was lucky not to have been shot dead by security. And your whine about deserving wealth for your childish behavior, lowers our already low opinion of you to new depths.

The Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Farce

I was going to write more about the ridiculous decision of the Obama administration to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court, but Michael Anton on the Weekly Standard blog made many of my points for me.

the second half of KSM's taunt to his captors is coming true. He is off to New York, where he will have endless opportunities to converse with his many lawyers. They will work hard to ensure that his trial is all about what he "endured" at the hands of the U.S. government, and not at all about what he inflicted on the American people. They will strive to put in the dock George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, George Tenet, John Yoo, the CIA, and the United States government and the American people.

Is there any doubt that the trial will be a festival of Bush Derangement Syndrome and anti-American propaganda? Anton also correctly notes,

our civilian justice system is designed to do specific things, and to try non-citizen enemy combatants who make war on this country and slaughter innocent civilians is not one of them. Now that system will be used for what will likely be a months-long propaganda circus that will make a mockery of our principles and broadcast a message of weakness and pusillanimity to terrorists, their fellow travelers, and intellectual mentors around the world. Even if the U.S. government ends up winning the legal case, we all lose.

But terrorist rights supporters don't care about any of that. They are determined to degrade U.S. constitutional rights by extending them even to hostile alien terrorists. They've long been bleating about the "rule of law" and "due process," as if those concepts had anything to do with alien terrorists who declare war on the U.S. and target our civilians. For much of our history the rule of law would have labeled Mohammed an unlawful combatant, subject to summary execution. And his due process would have been a blindfold and a firing squad, or a drop from the gallows.

I've said it before and I'll repeat it again. The U.S. was fully justified in waterboarding Mohammed. Far more extreme torture would also have been justifiable. He should have received a quick summary execution after we had extracted all available intelligence, which was years ago. The idea that we have to give him the rights of a U.S. citizen, access to lawyers, and a platform to propagandize is just insane.

Yawning at the Tom Ridge Story

Many people have breathlessly seized on the supposed revelations from former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge's upcoming memoirs, despite the obvious lack of credibility of most political tell-alls. Ridge apparently claims that he was pressured to raise the terror alert level before the 2004 election, and that he believed that senior administration officials -- specifically John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld -- were trying to manipulate the terror warning level for political purposes. Naturally the usual suspects -- primarily on the left, but some others as well -- have swallowed his assertion without hesitation, despite the fact that they will quickly reject anything Ridge has to say that differs from their preconceived notions about what went on during the Bush administration.

Here's what Ashcroft and Rumsfeld will say, if they bother to comment or even acknowledge wanting to raise the alert level in 2004. They'll maintain that the intelligence picture at the time warranted raising the threat level, or that the very fact of a presidential election automatically meant that the chances of an attack were more likely. Maybe they'll be lying and the whole thing was purely political. Maybe it was at least partially political. Or maybe they'll be telling the truth as they saw it. There's really no way to tell.  The opinion of one former administration official writing the usual self-serving memoir is hardly anything definitive. That might be something to keep in mind the next time some advanced BDS case starts screaming, "see, see, this proves that Bush was manipulating the terror alerts for political reasons!!"

Left-Wing Nonsense at The Atlantic

I know, big surprise. I stumbled across an article by Wendy Kaminer that illustrates how many on the left mistake their own assumptions and assertions for indisputable facts, delusions that poison any attempt to understand or even accurately analyze people on the right. Kaminer starts off complaining about town-hall protesters, apparently incorrectly assuming that they all represent conservative Republicans.

Having openly applauded, tacitly supported, or simply ignored the Bush/Cheney national security state and the unprecedented expansion of unaccountable executive power, the right wing now defends freedom against the spectre (and it is only a spectre) of universal health care?

The idea of a Bush/Cheney "national security state" is nothing more than a leftist myth. If there was a national security state under Bush, we still have one. But I guess it's not a big problem now that Obama is in charge. Calling anything Bush did an "unprecedented expansion of executive power" just reveals historical ignorance. Bush's minor expansion of executive power pales compared to presidents such as Lincoln and FDR. And opposition or lack thereof to Bush's policies is irrelevant to whether someone is opposed to different current policies.

the fury directed at "Obamacare" is partly fueled by angst about cultural and demographic changes (from gay marriage to the emergence of a non-white majority

The fury directed Obamacare is based on a dislike for the known, suspected, and feared provisions of Obamacare itself. Kaminer is basically just accusing opponents of racism and bigotry -- because that's a typical mode of argumentation on the left. It's much easier to demonize your opponents than actually deal with the substance of their arguments, or to recognize that your own positions could be mistaken or at least open to question. 

it also reflects a very limited understanding of repression and the role of government in everyone's life.

This assertion applies very well to Kaminer herself. This is a person who apparently doesn't understand that people oppose various aspects of Obamacare for differing reasons, or that conservatives are not opposed to all forms of government. She makes a big deal about the supposed paradox that conservatives support Medicare, a government program, while opposing the expansion of government control over health care at large. But there's no paradox. Kaminer doesn't even grasp the basics of conservatism -- in this case conserving an established institution while opposing radical change.

The rest of her article is more of the same false analogy about how conservatives supported the evil Bush/Cheney police state, yet fear Obama's health care initiatives, which of course she sees as innocuous at worst. Even accepting her ridiculous BDS-driven assertions and characterizations at face value reveals that she doesn't understand that people could possibly take a differing view of national security issues, and domestic policies such as health care. I guess it is just too difficult to grasp that someone could support certain restrictions on freedom in the interests of national security, while at the same time oppose encroachments on freedom in other areas. This is pretty amusing because the same leftists hysterically shrieking about a supposed loss of freedom caused by Bush's national security policies, couldn't care less about freedom when it comes to imposing tighter government controls on health care, industry, and almost every other aspect of people's lives. 

Government Still Pursuing a Bush-era Witch-hunt

House Democrats, still desperate to exact some sort of vengeance on Bush-era officials, especially Karl Rove, gave more documents to federal prosecutors investigating the 2006 firing of nine U.S. attorneys. This case is a prime example of a politically-motivated witch-hunt. The Bush administration fired prosecutors who serve at the pleasure of the president. In other words, he fired people who he had the right to fire for any reason. Political appointees are fired and replaced all the time, especially if they are deemed to be out of step with the administration for some reason or other.  But in this particular case, Democrats, acting based on their insane hatred of the Bush administration, decided to parse every detail of each firing to see if they could make a case that the terminations were somehow illegal. Naturally they couldn't. That was back in 2006. But amazingly they are still at it, wasting justice department time and resources on a partisan witch-hunt. Bush Derangement Syndrome has no known cure. Even time doesn't seem to lessen its grip.

Legal & Necessary

The New York Times has an op-ed today titled, "Illegal, and Pointless." In the course of pushing the same old left-wing cry about investigations into supposed "abuses" under the Bush administration, the Times makes the usual assertions that the BDS crowd pretends everyone should just take for granted. It starts with the first line.

We’ve known for years that the Bush administration ignored and broke the law repeatedly in the name of national security.

Actually, we know no such thing. There is no unmistakable evidence that the Bush administration broke the law at all, let alone repeatedly. Everything it did had an arguably legal justification. Take the CIA assassination program, 

what is overwhelmingly clear is that there was no legal or rational justification for Vice President Dick Cheney’s order to conceal the program from Congress.

This is not just wrong, it's a flat-out lie. The statute indicates that briefing Congress was a judgment call. There was nothing illegal about Cheney's order, and the Times knows this. It's deliberately lying for partisan reasons. Then there is this whopper,

it’s hard to imagine Congress balking at killing terrorists.

Yeah right. It's just so hard to imagine terrorist-rights supporters who hate the CIA -- pretty much every liberal Democrat in Congress -- balking at a CIA assassination program. And there were all kinds of reasons not to brief Congress, among them not having secret information appear in the New York Times -- which has proven repeatedly that it could care less about damaging national security by publishing leaked documents.

The entire op-ed is a pile of garbage that could have appeared in pretty much any BDS-infected left-wing blog. The Times pretends that the Bush administration not only might have broken the law or gone over the line, it just assumes that it did so deliberately over and over again. Naturally it also takes a convenient hindsight view that everything could easily have been done differently. The article is an example of partisan hackery at its finest.

BDS & The CIA

The crowd still suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome is all over the story about the CIA concealing the existence of some unspecified program from Congress, supposedly at the order of Dick Cheney. Here's the reliably laughable John Cole at Balloon Juice,

guess the extent of the criminality and the confirmation of Bush as puppet President is news...one analyst stated that the reason Washington is terrified to investigate this is because they know that so many laws were broken so flagrantly that any investigation will lead to the indictment of Bush and Cheney, and that, for obvious reasons, terrifies the Democrats (you can listen to that piece here). It would simply consume Washington and destroy Obama’s agenda

Left-wingers actually believe this stuff. But those not infected with BDS might point out a couple of problems with that sort of "analysis."

First off, the Bush administration did nothing clearly illegal. They had a legal argument for everything they did. You would never know that from reading anything on the left. Leftists and other Bush-haters love to pretend that the Bush administration committed all sorts of illegalities. They believe this so fervently that, as usual, they confuse their opinion for fact. But in actual fact, although the Bush adminstration operated in many legal gray areas and made various borderline decisions, there was no single action that was unquestionably illegal. That's why there won't be any prosecution of Bush or Cheney. Rational people understand that there just isn't any clearcut evidence of criminal actions, regardless of the screeching of the hysterical left.

Second, the CIA story in question clearly illustrates how BDS removes any ability to logically analyze things related to the Bush administration -- as if we needed another example. Right in the article, apparently ignored by BDS cases like Cole, we find the following:  

the language of the statute, the amended National Security Act of 1947, leaves some leeway for judgment, saying such briefings should be done “to the extent consistent with due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure of classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods or other exceptionally sensitive matters.”

For people who don't believe conspiracy theories about Dick Cheney being a criminal mastermind controlling a puppet president, the above quote seems to indicate that the failure to report a CIA program was not in fact illegal. Once again you have a statute with leeway for interpretation. Disagreeing with the judgment of the Bush administration, or hating Cheney with fanatical intensity doesn't make something illegal.

Left-wing Nonsense about Torture and Iraq

Assorted left-wing blogs are pushing a conspiracy-theory that the Bush administration was torturing terrorists in order to create a false link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Their child-like attachment to this fantasy isn't at all surprising. Left-wingers have long pretended that Bush pushed a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and that this was a major part of how the administration "deceived" the public into supporting the Iraq War. The huge list of actual reasons for war wasn't enough. But leaving that aside, this latest theory is if anything even more illogical -- and that's saying a lot when we are talking about the left. 

Obviously the Bush administration was interested in possible connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. There would be no reason not to question prisoners about that issue. And yes, if such a connection could have been established, it would have greatly strengthened the Bush case against Iraq. Left-wingers look at that, jump on a few unsubstantiated allegations, combine them with their intense belief that the Bush administration was pure evil, and come up with a conspiracy theory. But there's one slight problem: no such connection between Saddam & Al Qaeda was established. Were the conspiracy theory actually true, the Bush administration could easily have created a strong Saddam-Al Qaeda link. Even the most clueless left-wingers know that torture is quite effective at forcing confessions. If the Bush administration were the evil entity the left thinks that is was -- a so-called "torture regime," it could have tortured confessions of an Al Qaeda-Iraq link out of plenty of prisoners. It could have used those statements as proof of a connection, and actually (rather than in the minds of leftists) sold the war against Iraq as a war against Al Qaeda too.

But of course that didn't happen. The Bush administration did not torture false confessions of a Saddam-Al Qaeda link from prisoners. It didn't happen because U.S. interrogations were done in order to extract information thought necessary to protect the country. Most rational people understand that, whether they agree with the interrogation methods or not. But much of the left is completely irrational when it comes to anything involving the Bush administration, and has been for years.

New York Times Whining & BDS

There have been a lot of pretty silly editorials by the New York Times, but the latest is one of the most laughable I've seen in a long time. And this is from the editorial board, not some clown like Frank Rich.  

We do not envy President Obama as he tries to undo George W. Bush’s illegal and shameful detainee policy.

Except it wasn't illegal or shameful. And Obama is basically maintaining it. Other than that, it's a great characterization.

But that does not change the fact that Mr. Obama was wrong when he flip-flopped and decided to resist orders by two federal courts to release the photos.

That's an opinion, not a fact. For people more concerned with U.S. security, Obama's decision was the correct one. There was no good reason to release more pictures of abuses. After a section about Obama's proposed changes to military tribunals, we come to one of the most idiotic parts of the Times argument

The problem is that these tribunals, unlike traditional ones, did not just cover prisoners captured on the battlefield. They covered anyone whom Mr. Bush declared beyond the reach of law with the preposterous claim that the whole world is now a field of battle.

The editorial board of the Times is basically declaring that they don't have the slightest idea about terrorism, or what a fight against Al Qaeda entails. There is no "battlefield" in most cases. Al Qaeda isn't an army. It's a bunch of non-state terrorists. The fact that a terrorist is captured in some other circumstances than a battle doesn't make him an ordinary criminal, as the Times seems to think.

Since the Times is apparently so utterly clueless about the practical matters involved in fighting a non-state terrorist group, it's no surprise that their ideas are so ridiculous. The entire article is nothing but whining and sniveling about the supposed evils of Bush, and how terrorists need to be tried in civilian court. You can tell that they are horrified that their beloved Obama isn't living up to expectations. Where are the show trials? Where are the rights for terrorists like the poor oppressed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Obama is actually worrying about national security, and making practical decisions instead of being a BDS-infected nutcase. And the Times can't have that. 

A Voice for Reason

There was a short editorial in the New York Daily News yesterday called, "Case closed: Justice Department should bar prosecutions over Bush torture memos." With all the crazed, hysterical cries for political prosecutions from the left, and from other terrorist rights supporters, it's nice to actually see an occasional voice of reason. Here's the key passage:

President Obama has ruled out prosecuting the CIA agents who conducted the interrogations, and no one is talking about hauling top decision makers, such as President Bush and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, into the dock. To consider indicting the men in the middle like Yoo and Bybee would be absurd.

You might think it would be obvious that we don't prosecute lawyers for giving legal advice , even if we disagree with their legal theories. But the BDS crowd and terrorist rights supporters are so unhinged by the fact that they can't get Bush and other top officials, that they'll go after anyone who appears more vulnerable. That's why they've focused on the lawyers. They want their witchhunt. Never mind that indicting lawyers for giving legal advice would be a terrible precedent that would cause far more damage to the U.S. than any harm the Bush administration supposedly inflicted. It would undermine our legal system and force lawyers to worry more about protecting themselves, than in coming up with legal theories and interpretations in the service of their clients. And the people backing this radical assault on our system actually spout platitudes about the "rule of law," another term that is well on its way toward being rendered meaningless by political redefinition.

Extreme BDS at the New York Times

Frank Rich has a laughable article up called, "The Banality of Bush White House Evil." All you have to do is look at the title to know you are dealing with a complete nutcase, deranged by his insane hatred of former President Bush. Rich, who sneered at the label "Axis of Evil" when applied to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Iran and North Korea, has no problem calling U.S. efforts to gain  intelligence "evil." They couldn't just be mistaken, normal problems with trying to fight an unconventional war where intelligence is at a premium, or even just bad mistakes in judgment. No, they are pure evil. Not only that, but Rich is pushing a ridiculous conspiracy theory as well,

Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.

Look at all the unfounded assumptions and blanket assertions. You can tell Rich actually believes this stuff. He's a prime example of why the left can't be taken seriously in their sniveling and whining about torture, and their hysterical cries for show trials. Bush Derangement Syndrome renders them completely incapable of having any sort of rational perspective on almost any issues involving the Bush administration. Even now, with Bush out of power, the effects of BDS continue to ravage the left. Maybe there is no cure.

Pointing Out the Obvious

Patterico has a post up called "Democrats Have No Right To Be Snooty About Rush Not Wanting the President to Succeed." The fact that Democrats are utter hypocrites in their attacks on Limbaugh is self-evident to anyone on the right, given eight years of BDS. But Patterico actually digs up a poll from August 2006 showing that 51% of Democratic respondents answered "no" to the question: "Regardless of how you voted in the presidential election, would you say you want President Bush to succeed or not?" And that's from random sample Democrats. If you polled the left-wing base, the no's would have been close to 100%. 

Secret Dictatorship

Anyone who expected that BDS would go away after the election can think again. It's been pretty funny watching the hysterical overreaction to the recently released Bush administration memos. But Scott Horton's article at Harper's is one of the most ludicrous I've seen, especially since it appears in a respected publication rather than on some easily-dismissed left-wing blog. Here's Horton:

We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. The constitutional rights we learned about in high school civics were suspended.

Yeah, we just missed the whole dictatorship thing. Why? Because it was secret. That's right, it was the first secret dictatorship in history. It was so secret that it resulted in the dictator's entire political establishment being voted out of power and getting replaced by the opposition. In a country of 300 million, the violation of constitutional rights was so secret that no one can actually provide any concrete examples (conspiracy theories don't count), other than Jose Padilla -- and the supposed dictator meekly acquiesced when the courts slapped down the executive branch for exceeding its authority in that case. Some dictator. Oops, I almost forgot that Bush was a secret dictator.  I guess that's why it appears to rational people that he wasn't a dictator at all -- just a third-rate president who inspired insanity in his opponents.

Dick Cheney -- Keeping BDS alive

Dick Cheney did an interview with Politico and warned that Obama administration policies will make it more likely that the U.S. will be attacked. Naturally this produced immediate howls of outrage on the left. Any time Cheney so much as opens his mouth, he causes a BDS outbreak. One of the more amusing responses came from Spencer Ackerman at Attackerman, who is usually good for some laughs. Ackerman's post is called, "Someone is Lying." I wonder who he means? He writes

Barely two weeks out of office and Dick Cheney is already mongering fear.

That's right, warning about the threat of possible future terrorist attacks is "fearmongering." What about hysterically predicting economic ruin if Democratic spending bills don't pass? Well, that's just fine. Ackerman, like most on the left, is oblivious to hypocrisy unless it comes from Republicans.

Ackerman goes on to whine about Cheney saying that 11-12% of Guantanamo detainees have returned to terrorism, claiming that Cheney's figures have been "debunked." They haven't; they're highly debatable. He says the true figure is actually 4-5%. Hey, no problem then. Let's just turn them all loose. But enough with Ackerman's nonsense. What did Cheney say?

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry”

Dick Cheney may have been wrong about many things (like his extreme theory of a unitary executive), but he's right on target here. There are indeed many people more concerned with terrorist "rights" than protecting the U.S. Read almost any left-wing blog, or numerous libertarian ones. Cheney also points out that defending the country is

“a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.”

He's correct again. Unfortunately the usual suspects think we can fight terrorist enemies through neat, tidy, legalistic rules.  Rather than recognizing that a struggle against scattered terrorist non-state actors requires operating in gray areas, they'd rather tie the hands of the U.S.

Cheney scores another telling point.

“The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy."

I'm not certain the Obama administration is as naive as he thinks, but I believe this point is critical. I would go farther than Cheney, and say that the U.S. needs to be not just respected but feared. We should welcome the hatred of many of those who hate the U.S. If they don't hate us we are doing something wrong.

The standard response to everything Cheney says from the left is that Bush administration policies have made us less safe. You'll hear this garbage repeated endlessly like some sort of mantra. This is typical of what passes for left-wing logical reasoning. Regardless of all the mistakes and incompetence of the Bush administration, this charge is complete nonsense. No matter what you think of the morality or legality of Bush administration actions, the fact remains that there was not another major terrorist attack on the U.S. after 9/11 -- period. Even lousy administrations do some things right.