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View Full Version : Obama to close terrorist black sites, just to be safe



Whet
1/21/2009, 11:18 PM
Gitmo - closed
Overseas interrogation sites - closed
Military tribunals - closed
US. Justice system - open! After if OJ can be found not guilty, so can Sheik Kallid Mohamad


President Obama on Thursday will order the closure of so-called black sites, where CIA and European security services have interrogated terrorist suspects, under executive orders dismantling much of the Bush admistration's architecture for the war on terror, according to four individuals familiar with a draft executive order.
Mr. Obama will shutter "all permanant detention facilities overseas," the draft said, according to the individuals who asked not to be named because the orders have not yet been signed. There are at least eight such prisons, according to published reports. The Bush administration never revealed the number or location of the facilities, although several were said to be in Eastern Europe.


Here is the complete article: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/21/obama-close-terrorist-black-sites/

It appears Jimmy Carterisms are at work again!

bri
1/21/2009, 11:28 PM
Oh, I don't know. Seems to me the US justice system did an alright job of finding Timothy McVeigh guilty.

And Terry Nichols.

And Mohammad Salameh.

And Nidal Ayyad.

And Mahmud Abouhalima.

And Ahmad Ajaj.

achiro
1/21/2009, 11:34 PM
I'm so ****ING glad that Obama thinks that the ****ING terrorists are important enough to need his protection in his first full day in ****ING office!!!!!:mad:
Glad to see that he has his priorities right and is working on the really important stuff first. :rolleyes:

Vaevictis
1/21/2009, 11:38 PM
You do realize that this is less about the terrorists and more about messaging, right?

Whet
1/21/2009, 11:44 PM
Oh, this wasn't his first act. His first decision was to allow government funding of abortions.

Rhino
1/21/2009, 11:44 PM
And Farouk Jugdish.

achiro
1/21/2009, 11:46 PM
Oh, this wasn't his first act. His first decision was to allow government funding of abortions.

Yep, all that important ****!:rolleyes:

KC//CRIMSON
1/21/2009, 11:47 PM
And Baba Ganoush.

Whet
1/21/2009, 11:47 PM
interesting read;



It will not be easy for President B. Hussein Obama. More than half the country voted for him, and yet our newspapers are brimming with snippy remarks at every little aspect of his inauguration.
Here's a small sampling of the churlishness in just The New York Times:
-- The American public is bemused by the tasteless show-biz extravaganza surrounding Barack Obama's inauguration today.
-- There is something to be said for some showiness in an inauguration. But one felt discomfited all the same.
-- This is an inauguration, not a coronation.
-- Is there a parallel between Mrs. Obama's jewel-toned outfit and somebody else's glass slippers? Why limousines and not shank's mare?
-- It is still unclear whether we are supposed to shout "Whoopee!" or "Shame!" about the new elegance the Obamas are bringing to Washington.
Boy, talk about raining on somebody's parade! These were not, of course, comments about the inauguration of the angel Obama; they are (slightly edited) comments about the inauguration of another historic president, Ronald Reagan, in January 1981.
http://media.townhall.com/townhall/ads/coulterDaily_Mag_Ad3.jpg (http://magazine.townhall.com/coulter)
Obama's inaugural address tracked much of Reagan's first inaugural address -- minus the substance -- the main difference being that Obama did not invoke God as stoutly or frequently, restricting his heavenly references to a few liberal focus-grouped phrases, such as "God-given" and "God's grace."
Obama was also not as fulsome in his praise of his predecessor as Reagan was. To appreciate how remarkable this is, recall that Reagan's predecessor was Jimmy Carter.
Under Carter, more than 50 Americans were held hostage by a two-bit terrorist Iranian regime for 444 days -- released the day of Reagan's inauguration. Under Bush, there has not been another terrorist attack since Sept. 11, 2001.
But I gather that if Obama had uttered anything more than the briefest allusion to Bush, that would have provoked yet more booing from the Hope-and-Change crowd, which moments earlier had showered Bush with boos when he walked onto the stage. That must be the new tone we've been hearing so much about.
So maybe liberals can stop acting as if the entire nation could at last come together in a "unity of purpose" if only conservatives would stop fomenting "conflict and discord" -- as Obama suggested in his inaugural address. We're not the ones who booed a departing president.
It is a liberal trope to insult conservatives by asking them meaningless questions, such as the one repeatedly asked of Bush throughout his presidency about whether he had made any mistakes. All humans make mistakes -- what is the point of that question other than to give insult?

When will the first reporter ask President Obama to admit that he has made mistakes? Try: Never.
No, that question will disappear for the next four years. It will be replaced by the new question for conservatives on every liberal's lips these days: Do you want Obama to succeed as president?
Answer: Of course we do. We live here, too.
But merely to ask the question is to imply that the 60 million Americans who did not vote for Obama are being unpatriotic if they do not wholeheartedly endorse his liberal agenda.
I guess it depends on the meaning of "succeed." If Obama "succeeds" in pushing through big-government, terrorist-appeasing policies, he will not have "succeeded" at being a good president. If we didn't think conservative principles of small government and strong national defense weren't better for the country, we wouldn't be conservatives.
And why was that question never asked of liberals producing assassination books and movies about President Bush for the last eight years?
Say, did liberals want Pastor Rick Warren to succeed delivering a meaningful invocation at the inaugural?
The way I remember it, the Hope-and-Change crowd viciously denounced the Christian pastor, stamped their feet and demanded that Obama withdraw the invitation -- all because Rick Warren agrees with Obama's stated position on gay marriage, which also happens to be the position of a vast majority of Americans every time they have been allowed to vote on the matter.
Liberals always have to play the victim, acting as if they merely want to bring the nation together in hope and unity in the face of petulant, stick-in-the-mud conservatives. Meanwhile, they are the ones booing, heckling and publicly fantasizing about the assassination of those who disagree with them on policy matters.
Hope and unity, apparently, can only be achieved if conservatives would just go away -- and perhaps have the decency to kill themselves.
Republicans are not the ones who need to be told that "the time has come to set aside childish things" -- as Obama said of his own assumption of the presidency. Remember? We're the ones who managed to gaze upon Carter at the conclusion of his abomination of a presidency without booing.

achiro
1/21/2009, 11:48 PM
You do realize that this is less about the terrorists and more about messaging, right?

Sure, I understand thats what he HAS to think to be so GD stupid! God forbid he spend some time actually trying to figure out what the ramifications will be before he makes those promises that empower the enemy.

Vaevictis
1/22/2009, 12:09 AM
I'm pretty sure he's had plenty of time to consider the ramifications. It's not like he woke up yesterday and said, "Hey, I want to be President. Let's go do that."

bri
1/22/2009, 12:39 AM
And Farouk Jugdish.

That dude can ball.

Jerk
1/22/2009, 06:12 AM
Oh, this wasn't his first act. His first decision was to allow government funding of abortions.

Sh8T like this makes me hope the government becomes insolvent here in the next 5 years.

Want an abortion? Pay for it yourself, b*tch.

achiro
1/22/2009, 08:25 AM
I'm pretty sure he's had plenty of time to consider the ramifications. It's not like he woke up yesterday and said, "Hey, I want to be President. Let's go do that."

No he just said it as part of his campaign promises and now has to figure out how take care of doing it. He's really thought it out though, thats why in the same day he went from saying 1 year to 4 years and back to 1 year. :rolleyes:
As I said before, this is s stupid decision IMO but one that he promised to make. The issue I have is that he decided that it was so important that he had to work on it on his first day in office.

Whet
1/22/2009, 10:36 AM
more enjoyment from the president:

The Obama presidency:
Here comes socialism By Dick Morris
Posted: 01/20/09 06:12 PM [ET]

2009-2010 will rank with 1913-14, 1933-36, 1964-65 and 1981-82 as years that will permanently change our government, politics and lives. Just as the stars were aligned for Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan, they are aligned for Obama. Simply put, we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden — a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.

Obama will accomplish his agenda of “reform” under the rubric of “recovery.” Using the electoral mandate bestowed on a Democratic Congress by restless voters and the economic power given his administration by terrified Americans, he will change our country fundamentally in the name of lifting the depression. His stimulus packages won’t do much to shorten the downturn — although they will make it less painful — but they will do a great deal to change our nation.

In implementing his agenda, Barack Obama will emulate the example of Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Not the liberal mythology of the New Deal, but the actuality of what it accomplished.) When FDR took office, he was enormously successful in averting a total collapse of the banking system and the economy. But his New Deal measures only succeeded in lowering the unemployment rate from 23 percent in 1933, when he took office, to 13 percent in the summer of 1937. It never went lower. And his policies of over-regulation generated such business uncertainty that they triggered a second-term recession. Unemployment in 1938 rose to 17 percent and, in 1940, on the verge of the war-driven recovery, stood at 15 percent. (These data and the real story of Hoover’s and Roosevelt’s missteps, uncolored by ideology, are available in The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes, copyright 2007.)

But in the name of a largely unsuccessful effort to end the Depression, Roosevelt passed crucial and permanent reforms that have dominated our lives ever since, including Social Security, the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, unionization under the Wagner Act, the federal minimum wage and a host of other fundamental changes.

Obama’s record will be similar, although less wise and more destructive. He will begin by passing every program for which liberals have lusted for decades, from alternative-energy sources to school renovations, infrastructure repairs and technology enhancements. These are all good programs, but they normally would be stretched out for years. But freed of any constraint on the deficit — indeed, empowered by a mandate to raise it as high as possible — Obama will do them all rather quickly.

But it is not his spending that will transform our political system, it is his tax and welfare policies. In the name of short-term stimulus, he will give every American family (who makes less than $200,000) a welfare check of $1,000 euphemistically called a refundable tax credit. And he will so sharply cut taxes on the middle class and the poor that the number of Americans who pay no federal income tax will rise from the current one-third of all households to more than half. In the process, he will create a permanent electoral majority that does not pay taxes, but counts on ever-expanding welfare checks from the government. The dependency on the dole, formerly limited in pre-Clinton days to 14 million women and children on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, will now grow to a clear majority of the American population.

Will he raise taxes? Why should he? With a congressional mandate to run the deficit up as high as need be, there is no reason to raise taxes now and risk aggravating the depression. Instead, Obama will follow the opposite of the Reagan strategy. Reagan cut taxes and increased the deficit so that liberals could not increase spending. Obama will raise spending and increase the deficit so that conservatives cannot cut taxes. And, when the economy is restored, he will raise taxes with impunity, since the only people who will have to pay them would be rich Republicans.

In the name of stabilizing the banking system, Obama will nationalize it. Using Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to write generous checks to needy financial institutions, his administration will demand preferred stock in exchange. Preferred stock gets dividends before common stockholders do. With the massive debt these companies will owe to the government, they will only be able to afford dividends for preferred stockholders — the government, not private investors. So who will buy common stock? And the government will demand that its bills be paid before any profits that might materialize are reinvested in the financial institution, so how will the value of the stocks ever grow? Devoid of private investors, these institutions will fall ever more under government control.

Obama will begin the process by limiting executive compensation. Then he will urge restructuring and lowering of home mortgages in danger of default (as the feds have already done with Citibank).
Then will come guidance on the loans to make and government instructions on the types of enterprises to favor. God grant that some Blagojevich type is not in charge of the program, using his power to line his pockets. The United States will find itself with an economic system comparable to that of Japan, where the all-powerful bureaucracy at MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) manages the economy, often making mistakes like giving mainframe computers priority over the development of laptops.

But it is the healthcare system that will experience the most dramatic and traumatic of changes. The current debate between erecting a Medicare-like governmental single payer or channeling coverage through private insurance misses the essential point. Without a lot more doctors, nurses, clinics, equipment and hospital beds, health resources will be strained to the breaking point. The people and equipment that now serve 250 million Americans and largely neglect all but the emergency needs of the other 50 million will now have to serve everyone. And, as government imposes ever more Draconian price controls and income limits on doctors, the supply of practitioners and equipment will decline as the demand escalates. Price increases will be out of the question, so the government will impose healthcare rationing, denying the older and sicker among us the care they need and even barring them from paying for it themselves. (Rationing based on income and price will be seen as immoral.)

And Obama will move to change permanently the partisan balance in America. He will move quickly to legalize all those who have been in America for five years, albeit illegally, and to smooth their paths to citizenship and voting. He will weaken border controls in an attempt to hike the Latino vote as high as he can in order to make red states like Texas into blue states like California. By the time he is finished, Latinos and African-Americans will cast a combined 30 percent of the vote. If they go by top-heavy margins for the Democrats, as they did in 2008, it will assure Democratic domination (until they move up the economic ladder and become good Republicans).

And he will enact the check-off card system for determining labor union representation, repealing the secret ballot in union elections. The result will be to raise the proportion of the labor force in unions up to the high teens from the current level of about 12 percent.

Finally, he will use the expansive powers of the Federal Communications Commission to impose “local” control and ownership of radio stations and to impose the “fairness doctrine” on talk radio. The effect will be to drive talk radio to the Internet, fundamentally change its economics, and retard its growth for years hence.

But none of these changes will cure the depression. It will end when the private sector works through the high debt levels that triggered the collapse in the first place. And, then, the large stimulus package deficits will likely lead to rapid inflation, probably necessitating a second recession to cure it.

So Obama’s name will be mud by 2012 and probably by 2010 as well. And the Republican Party will make big gains and regain much of its lost power.

But it will be too late to reverse the socialism of much of the economy, the demographic change in the electorate, the rationing of healthcare by the government, the surge of unionization and the crippling of talk radio.

Chuck Bao
1/23/2009, 11:07 AM
Count me among those glad President Obama kept this campaign promise on day one.

One of those “black sites” supposedly is in Thailand. If there is one here, it basically tells the Thai government that it is okay to have secret detention centers. It is okay to lock up citizens without court proceedings and due process. It is okay to deny people access to the outside and legal representation. It is okay to torture.

Earlier this week, a young activist student filed a court case against the Thai army, accusing them of detaining and then torturing him. He gets to tell his story. I wonder how many do not.

If Thai military and police are getting this message from the US’s use of unofficial black sites, I shutter to think how this message is playing out in Burma and elsewhere.

I love this quote from President Obama’s inaugural address: "We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals … Those ideals still light the world and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."

achiro
1/23/2009, 11:45 AM
Count me among those glad President Obama kept this campaign promise on day one.

One of those “black sites” supposedly is in Thailand. If there is one here, it basically tells the Thai government that it is okay to have secret detention centers. It is okay to lock up citizens without court proceedings and due process. It is okay to deny people access to the outside and legal representation. It is okay to torture.

Earlier this week, a young activist student filed a court case against the Thai army, accusing them of detaining and then torturing him. He gets to tell his story. I wonder how many do not.

If Thai military and police are getting this message from the US’s use of unofficial black sites, I shutter to think how this message is playing out in Burma and elsewhere.

I love this quote from President Obama’s inaugural address: "We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals … Those ideals still light the world and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."


There sure is a lot of speculation in your post. Huge difference between a country taking one of their own citizens into custody and a war criminal being taken to a facility for questioning.
I have seen nothing that convinces me that our country will be safer as a result of removing tools from the military and cia. Since the safety of my country and my family are the most important to me I think it is a horrible move.

Chuck Bao
1/23/2009, 01:05 PM
There sure is a lot of speculation in your post. Huge difference between a country taking one of their own citizens into custody and a war criminal being taken to a facility for questioning.
I have seen nothing that convinces me that our country will be safer as a result of removing tools from the military and cia. Since the safety of my country and my family are the most important to me I think it is a horrible move.

Huh?

What I posted is in fact happening, not speculation. The use of illegal detainment and torture is not helping the Thai government eliminate the frequent terrorist attacks in Thailand’s three southernmost provinces or quell the separatist movement. It has had the opposite effect, essentially proving separatist leaders’ point that Thai muslims are not being treated equally as citizens. This “war” is not being won, at least not the hearts and minds part of it.

Do you really think your family is in danger of a terrorist attack? You must have a high profile family or travel overseas frequently.

War of Terrorism…War on Drugs…War on Saying Bad Stuff on the Internet (seriously!). Do you think it really matters if a person is a citizen? I know, let’s have two laws – one for citizens and one for foreigners. It’s just a hop, skip and jump from that to spying on US citizens (hop) and detaining US citizens and torture (skip and jump).

And, do you have a great deal of confidence that those illegally detained are actually criminals since no proof is needed? Are brothers, sisters, sons and daughters fair game in the rush to elicit information? But, what if it helps to thwart terrorist attacks?

And, what if, heaven forbid, that there is a War on Private Ownership of Guns?

This debate is much broader with far reaching consequences than most Americans realize. That is not speculation.

85Sooner
1/23/2009, 01:07 PM
Oh, I don't know. Seems to me the US justice system did an alright job of finding Timothy McVeigh guilty.

And Terry Nichols.

And Mohammad Salameh.

And Nidal Ayyad.

And Mahmud Abouhalima.

And Ahmad Ajaj.

Unfortunately, all of the information previously discovered will be not allowed in a US courts. Thus, in a US court there will not be any evidence to present and a first year lawyer would get the cases thrown out. Then what?


From the NYtimes:
The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda's Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order that President Barack Obama signed that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen's capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

His status was announced in an Internet statement by the militant group and was confirmed by a U.S. counterterrorism official. "They're one and the same guy," said the official, who insisted on anonymity because he was discussing an intelligence analysis. "He returned to Saudi Arabia in 2007, but his movements to Yemen remain unclear."

and what do we do next time?

soonerscuba
1/23/2009, 01:18 PM
and what do we do next time?Blame Obama and do a redneck call to arms on the internet?

One issue I have is that Obama is placing policy before analysis in order to take what is in his opinion a moral high ground. Meet the new boss... except this one won't cost a trillion dollars.

OklahomaTuba
1/23/2009, 02:36 PM
Restoring our place in the world community, one missile at a time.


Pakistani intelligence officials say a suspected U.S. missile strike has killed at least nine people in a northwestern village near the Afghan border.
The officials say a suspected U.S. drone - an unmanned aircraft - fired three missiles into a house Friday outside Mir Ali, in North Waziristan province.

Obama lied, people died.

Go Bush III!!

OklahomaTuba
1/23/2009, 02:38 PM
Pakistani intelligence officials.

That's some solid gold comedy right there folks.

KC//CRIMSON
1/23/2009, 02:43 PM
Blame Obama and do a redneck call to arms on the internet?

85's not much of a fighter. He'd just try to hook them up with a home entertainment center.

85Sooner
1/23/2009, 04:45 PM
85's not much of a fighter. He'd just try to hook them up with a home entertainment center.

Lets see.... hmm about 18 years of Ice Hockey, I wonder........ Heh

But i have great aim.

Frozen Sooner
1/23/2009, 04:55 PM
Probably not worth mentioning that John McCain supports closing overseas interrogation sites as well and released a statement lauding this move.

soonerscuba
1/23/2009, 04:55 PM
Pakistani intelligence officials.

That's some solid gold comedy right there folks.Remember when you accused those who disagreed with American intelligence officials in Iraq as being treasonous? Good times. We get it, Obama isn't going to do anything you like. Even actions you would like under Bush, you are not going to like under Obama. You're not that hard to peg down, Tuba.