Obviously Unknown chooses to not read my comments concerning Hitler and the double agent in WWII that helped the Normandy Landing. Or he chooses to be obtuse and purposefully try and cover it up. Either way, it’s indicative of bad logic and even worse propaganda.

People who choose not to look at the good arguments and state that everybody is out to get them or that nobody can debunk them, are quite suspicious to me.

http://www.americanpresident.org

Go to Presidency in History for brief essays on all our previous fearless leaders – some of whom make George Bush look like JPII…or Hitler, depending on whose bio you read.

I have to conclude that the American electorate have always been a bit loony, and our Presidents’ characters have ranged from saintly to satanic. I shouldn’t be so discouraged over the situation today. We seem to go through this kind of thing every so often.

Executive power indeed if Bush could simply assign a board to set the wage levels.

OK, I can dig it, man. (Sorry – attack of the 60s. It’ll pass…)

I see your point, and I have no problem acknowledging the truth of your statement. I also acknowledge that my level of concern is not as high as yours – a difference in interpretation, not perception.

I guess my problem is not with the facts – my problem is with the hysteria. The factual tone of your statement leads me to respect your position far more than all the emotional and personal rhetoric I’m used to seeing in these comments.

Again, this is probably an image issue – certain people shouting “Bush = Hitler” rather than “It’s an acknowledged fact by everyone that Bush, Cheney, etc…” Admittedly, the latter is not exactly pithy or inspiring. But the former only makes the speaker look like a paranoid schizophrenic on crack.

I’m not actually looking for a reason to dismiss Unk’s (or anyone’s) reasoned arguments against the administration’s policies. But whenever I hear disapproval of something Bush has or hasn’t done, the image of an aged hippy waving a Bush = Hitler sign pops into my head. That’s just me thinking in cliches – if it even qualifies as thinking.

Maybe that’s the trick – I need to filter the hippy out of my thinking. It would help me a lot, though, if other people would filter the hippy out of their language.

Sounds like you’ve got your share of secrets and scandals to deal with. Guess it goes with having a government. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it. Or stand it up against the wall and shoot it, more’s frequently the pity.

I’ll check out the background on Waihopai. That name seems familiar, but I can’t recall why. I’m sorry – all I know about New Zealand is Peter Jackson, kiwis, and really big crickets.

Are you a reporter by any chance? Or just an extraordinarily well-informed citizen? Your posts seem more fact-based and your opinions less freaky than I expect to find in the comments section.

Oh – I do remember reading about the Skyhawks, but that’s because my Dad used to fly them in the USMC. Great little plane, but if you don’t need it you don’t need it.

If our enemies think they will be imprisoned forever, tortured, and possibly beaten to death if captured, they’re less likely to surrender and more likely to fight to the death if cornered.

If only they hadn’t leaked that we were torturing people to death…

Damn those leakers! They’re killin’ our boys!

Right, that is why the FBI agent had to issue his statement, correcting the error… or was he, as you imply, covering up?

I will admit this is a curious story, and there are many questions it raises, with as much evidence (maybe more) pointing to the fact that they were not terrorists that that they were. But barring further investigation by the media, we’ll never know will we?

But please play fair Darrell. I never argued that there is no threat. I asked a simple question:

How exactly, as Neo declared, are leaks crippling our ability to defend ourselves?

And no one so far has been able to answer that.

I’ve never had any kind of clearance, but this is the impression I’ve gotten, certainly in the case of the recent CIA and NSA leaks. Perhaps I’m missing something.

The Senate Intelligence Committee knew about the NSA data-mining program. Why didn’t it act if there was such an obvious problem or threat to the Constitution?

Answer: it appears there was not such a problem, not enough of one to require a debate in public about the President’s power as CinC in a time of war, which also seriously compromises the program. The Committee made the assement knowing at least as much as the leaker. Why isn’t that enough?

There is no right in the Constitution saying that the public gets to know about and discuss, then vote on everything. It doesn’t work that way. And it can’t work that way, imo.

The Senate Committee seemingly could have easily demanded evidence enough to assure itself that there was no hanky panky going on, and should have done it anyway, since presumeably the members know about the possibility of abuse, and that’s one of the reasons the Oversight Committee even exists.

Did the noble leaker even ask within their agency whether the Senate Committee was informed? It seems very likely that the primary leaker would have had enough clearance to do it – ask.

Why bypass the Committe? If the leaker thinks it’s important enough to do it, let him or her “put something down on it”. The leaker owes it to the rest of us to out him/herself now at least so that s/he will not do something as or more transparently irresponsible, imo, in the future.

In the case of the secret overseas CIA prisons, I can’t escape the conclusion that the fact that they existed was virtually public. Dana Priest talked openly with many people who acknowledged their existence without anonymity or reservation, and gave details as she reported in her 2002 article. Priest herself reported that Tenet even talked about them in what seemed to be virtually a public speech before Priest’s 2002 article was even published. [He at least talked to a joint meeting of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.]

But it looks like people only talked openly about prisons which were no longer operating. Certainly the Oversight Committee had a clue, and could have investigated anything sufficiently troubling, at least starting with what Priest found out, if they didn’t already know about it.

The fact that the Committee didn’t report anything untoward concerning the defunct prisons tends to mean to me that nothing very troubling would be going on in the “black sites” currently operating, if any. CIA denies the existence of black sites, maybe to everyone, but the Committee knows at least that they have existed. It’s hard to imagine that the Committee doesn’t know more.

Information gleaned from the then defunct prisons was reported to be highly productive in getting to al Qaeda members. Priest herself called the secret prisons “vital” to the War on Terror – at least she did in her 2002 version of her 2005 article.

Where’s the beef?

It is becoming apparent that an ex-business partner has a very large axe to grind and is doing his best to discredit the MP. The latest is here if you are interested.

Because the political and bureaucratic wings are independant the chances of fraud and corruption are reduced. Take a look right through the “Cabinet Manual” that I linked previously.

“Pork barrel” politics has not been unknown here – I can give several outstanding examples – but since Parliament put in place “self-restraining” legislation such as the Fiscal Responsibility Act the possibilities have been much reduced.

The biggest scandals of the past have been more in the nature of total irresponsibility, stupidity and political mismanagement rather than covert dishonesty. There was an interesting one just recently when a historian was given access to David Lange’s private papers after his death. He discovered several reports relating to the Waihopai intelligence station. Google that for more info if you want. That was not “leaking” but plain carelessness and error on the part of the archivists responsible for Lange’s documents. Another instance could be the purchase of F-16As to replace our old Skyhawks, or the purchase of LAV-IIIs for the army. As is well known Auntie Helen got us out of the F-16s (what could we use them for when they would need refuelling twice to get across the ditch to Aus with full armament load on and again once coming back?) but not the LAV’s.

Perhaps it is as simple as “We do not have that many secrets.”