Excitable Andy has been on vacation from his blog, but appeared with Christopher Hitchens on The Tim Russert Show on Saturday. At about 2:30 into the linked video, Sully enthuses about the likely presidential contest between John McCain and Barack Obama:
To be honest this whole election has been draining, amazing and fun. But I couldn’t be more amazed that we might end up with McCain and Obama. I think the American people, both parties, would have selected (if that does end up the case) two who could finally…
The problem with Iraq is this country is so divided and partisan about it and yet our interests, it is so important to make the right call at this point. We need people to diffuse and detoxify the atmosphere…
During the same show, Sully also suggests that Don Rumsfeld, David Addington and John Yoo “will be, at some point, indicted for war crimes.”
Nothing divisive or partisan about that comment, natch… Is there a detox center that treats BDS yet?
(h/t Terry Ann Online.)
Excitable Andy kind of reminds me of datadave, just a better speller.
Self awareness is not Sullivan’s strong suit. He’s really more of a “if it feels good” sorta guy, one who will knowingly state falsehoods if the reception he gets from doing so is pleasing to him.
“if it feels good†sorta guy
TMI
“Is there a detox center that treats BDS yet?”
Good one! Unfortunately, as the Sullivan comments indicate, if the Democrats take power, they’ll continue to chase down GOP “warmongers,” pushing for domestic and international (war crimes) legal remedies (revenge) to the “worst disaster in U.S. history.”
Keep it up!
EdGuy – you are correct. I saw parts of this interview and was not very impressed. The only thing I could take away from Andy’s comments was that he was very emotional and passionate about his feelings. As for critical content and logic, there is no there there. Or at least none on display yesterday. It was really more of a stage for him to emote about how deeeeeply he feels about this or that. The best was Hitchens, who I am no fan of, calling him “My Dear” several times. I think it was something like “Listen, My Dear…” while Andy went on about how very much behind us the savior’s speech put Rev. Wright’s bigotry. It was very… erm… “yucky” . But it plays on the coasts, where logic is in short supply and feeeeeeelings… nothing more than feeeeeelings… (as well as sincerity) trump critical thinking every time. He definitely scores points with the latte-drinking intelligentsia.
I don’t mind Sweet Andrew. He strikes me as a nice, delusional bachelor fellow.
No baby yet, Enoch?
BTW, Russert and Frank Rich look like they could be potato-faced siblings.
more and more, my wife Jen and I are struck by the fact that agencies get paid for truly horrific advertisements. It seems unreal, given how bad they are by and large. Sullivan is sort of like this. A really bad advertisement. Kind of like top 40 radio. Just fucking awful.
JD – not yet! we’re headed for inducement on Wed.
And you guys? Any news for us?
Wednesday, BTW, is Enoch’s birthday.
Inducements suck. With #4 Doc told me to show up Monday, bright and early, to be induced (10 days past due date) —-weekend past and no baby, so Monday, around noonish, she called me at home and asked me where the hell I was. My response? Oh, you were SERIOUS about that? She was not amused.
That’s Andrew Sullivan, who writes for The Daily Bush, if anyone listened all the way through.
Enoch – Dr. Box is considering inducing this evening, so we are still in a holding pattern as well.
JD – Dr. Box is as appropriate a name as the OBGYN for our first… Dr. Seman. Not kidding. But then, what’s in a name.
Slart:
I heard that, and I kid you not, at first I thought he said “Daily Douche.” I had to play it over again.
Frankly, I like the way my old ears heard it first.
JD, Enoch:
Good luck & I’ll say a prayer this afternoon for both of your families.
Sorry, Dan. Sweet Andrew is a happily married ma…grk…snurf…aaaa AAAAHahahahahaaaaa!
Damn, I almost typed that with a straight face.
Cowboy – many thanks!
When I was growing up, I could count on one hand the other fellows who shared my Christian name. This is despite being a military brat and living all over the country. At first, I disliked my name, but when I made 21, I decided that it gave me distinction.
This bleeding heart wrapped in a GOP hide has ruine my name. I’m thinking of changing it to Smirky McChimp.
A capital idea!
Dear God, make with the kidlets already. Please and thank You. Peace, out.
“#Comment by Slartibartfast on 4/7 @ 7:07 am #
That’s Andrew Sullivan, who writes for The Daily Bush, if anyone listened all the way through.”
Andy likes bush?
Dear God, make with the kidlets already. Please and thank You. Peace, out. That cracked me up.
I have been trying that for a couple weeks now, with no success. Is the fact that the big guy upstairs is not listening proof of the fact that he does not exist, or simply does not care about us? lol
Cowboy – Thanks.
Andrew is dreaming of course, those guys will never see the court, not unless their name is Miloshevich or something with foreign spelling and citizenship…
EOD sez: Sometimes you can’t defuse it, so you just blow it up. Sullivan is portable, so we should be able to move him to a safe distance first….
I don’t know, sachal. The commanding general’s name sounds like a foreign to me…
Sashal,
Their names and citizenship don’t matter. What matters would be that they had broken a law. Since they have not, there’s no standing.
Sorry .. can’t spel, can’t right, cant theenc … burp,/i>
kantt due htmlssss
#27
and since they did, which Yoo’s memos prove 1000 times over, they would, if they were Milosevic
Insert standard sashal war criminal screed here
“#Comment by JD on 4/7 @ 8:30 am #
Insert standard sashal war criminal screed here”
Too late. See #30.
Really? That sounds like an assertion. Gonna provide evidence?
But, yeah, sashal, we get it. You hate Bush. You hate “neocons”. Hate, hate, hate.
memos are against the law? Is this kinda like suspending gradeschoolers for drawing guns?
sashal, give me a statute, um-k?
I’m not even going to bother asking for evidence, just, please, identify what law was broken.
JD, Enoch
Best thoughts and prayers your way on upcoming baby arrivals!!
yep, Rob, I hate people who damage my country and cause unnecessary death to many innocent people( and that includes Osama with his friends too, not only neocons)
I know , you like them. You only hate people who would like to defend USA laws and constitution…
yep, Rob, I hate people who damage my country and cause unnecessary death to many innocent people( and that includes Osama with his friends too, not only neocons)
I know , you like them. You only hate people who would like to defend USA laws and constitution…
So many assertions based on flawed information or lies, so many distortions of the truth, etc … One cannot even begin to unravel that kind of BDS.
that is really a shame, darleen that at this point in time you even ask that question.
here
also check O.Kerr’s and Ilya’s from Volokh conspiracy not just one article on this matter.
JD, believe me, it is not my fault that your info and knowledge on this matter is so foxly distorted…
Sashal,
FOAD.
Sincerely,
Me
Anyone happen to read the comments there? Some industrial strength stupid there.
great Rob, thanks for admission of your intellectual inferiority.
try to read this too
Any one ever think that sashal is really Yakov Smirnoff? What a country!
sashal:
Link one is for interrogators, so I don’t think Yoo’s in any danger there (nor Rumsfeld.) The second one points out a disagreement with Yoo’s legal rationalizations. Neither make the case that Yoo, Rumsfeld or any of the names you quote with such hope will ever face anything like the war crimes trials of Slavs found to have committed ethnic cleansing and real massacres.
Rough interrogation = Ethnic Cleansing/Massacres/Rapings/Etc. ???
Nice try, though.
thanks BJTex, for reading linked materials.
sashal
I asked for a link to an actual statute that outlaws memos, that makes a crime to offer legal opinions.
don’t read too good, do you?
typical irrational progg
So far you’ve provided links to someone else’s (wrong) opinions of the law.
I’ve asked for a citation–what law was broken. In this case “law” refers to any of the following: Article and Section of the US Constitution; specific treaty provision to which the US is a party (signed and ratified); or, statute under the United States Code.
Neither of your links discuss this.
sashal
maybe you’d feel more comfortable in an Islamic theocracy, or China, where they can execute cartoonists and authors for thought crimes.
I know I’d be happy to contribute to your emigration fund.
Eh? You said this about me:
Does that really deserve anything more than “FOAD”?
# 48 wins the thread as most thought provoking and intelligent answer.
Those pesky 70% of population , who refuse to go along with Bush’s moronism. Shame..
RTO
John Yoo’s Memorandum, as intended, directly led to  caused  a whole series of war crimes at both Guantanamo and in Iraq. The reason such a relatively low-level DOJ official was able to issue such influential and extraordinary opinions was because he was working directly with, and at the behest of, the two most important legal officials in the administration: George Bush’s White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, and Dick Cheney’s counsel (and current Chief of Staff) David Addington. Together, they deliberately created and authorized a regime of torture and other brutal interrogation methods that are, by all measures, very serious war crimes.
If writing memoranda authorizing torture  actions which then directly lead to the systematic commission of torture  doesn’t make one a war criminal in the U.S., what does?
GG
Sashal, respond to RTO Trainer, please. Don’t be a mendouche.
Convenient that you ignore #46 and #47, and only comment on #44 enough to admit that your links do not support your assertions.
Okay, you responded to him — by citing Gleenwald. So maybe you’re not a mendouche — maybe you’re just stupid.
McGehee, may be, one never know.
I hope not in the same category though as general Frank said about Feith-“worlds dumbest man”.
No?
Sashal: Try to understand the difference between people writing sweaty, anticipatory opinions about war crimes and the requests to show the actual laws broken by a minor DOJ lawyer writing a legal opinion memo.
Also, please note the aforementioned irony of comparing a hardly well established chain of numerous links from a memo to deeds with, you know, actual warcrimes like massacres and ethnic cleansing. The lack of credibility and the fantastical moral relativism does not lend itself to you being taken seriously on this issue.
That said you closed the credibility book by quoting the most dishonest, self serving legal opinionator/sock master in teh intertubes. Hysteria does not a court case make.
Sashal–there’s no citiation in any of that.
One thing that is requiored in our legal system is that hte accused has a right to know the nature of the charges against them (Amendm. 6, US Const.–See how easy that is?). If you, and others making similar arguments, are unprepared to offer a simple answer to this question, you will never manage to persuade anyone who makes decisions above bowel level.
JD, believe me.
No, thank you.
If writing memoranda authorizing torture  actions which then directly lead to the systematic commission of torture  doesn’t make one a war criminal in the U.S., what does?
GG
Arguments like that sound hauntingly Gleenwaldian …
You people can pretend this is about Sully, but your distraction is hardly germane to the matter at hand.
Karl;
Have you actually READ the Yoo doc?
http://www.esquire.com/print-this/qa/john-yoo-responds
BJTex, I do not share your opinion about GG.
Sorry, friend.
Guys, I apologize if I can not answer to every post or answer in timely manner,
I have a business here and sometimes even a customers in these not so good times for luxury or durable goods.
And yes, I am not a legal expert, I rely on the judgements of those who are, like guys in Volokh, Balkinization, and Greenwald(ouch! BJTex, I still want to be your friend)
Is there a detox center that treats BDS yet?
sashal, do you take any otc, “naturopathic”, or “health food store” additives, including mega doses of vitamins? If so, stop them immediately. I’ve seen some very bad cases involving nutritional supplements.
If you have gas or oil heat, is your furnace working correctly? Same with wood heat. Is your home “airtight”? Do you have a carbon monoxide detector? Is your vehicle’s exhaust system functioning properly?
Any prescription meds you take chronically could also be causing your problem.
Beyond that, you will need a full metabolic and toxicology screen – including tests for heavy metals such as lead and mercury, and don’t let them forget about arsenic – and some other simple tests for things like syphyilis and T.B..
I could go on, but know well, sashal, I am actually being serious. Something has really thrown you off.
You’re trying to persuade us of something here, no?
The art of persuasion beg8ins with finding common ground.
If we don’t buy Gleenwald as an authority, try someone else.
Better still, CITE THE FUCKING LAW YOU THINK YOO BROKE WITH HIS MEMO.
syphilis.
sashal: Still friends and still would have dinner and listen rapt to you talk about growing up in the USSR.
I just think you are way out on a limb on this one with nowhere to fall but down. Glenn Greenwald is not the bi-partisan source for opinion on this issue.
CITE THE FUCKING LAW YOU THINK YOO BROKE WITH HIS MEMO.
Yeah, I’m still waiting in vain for a cite of the law the Cheney Energy Task Force broke, not to mention the U.N. violation or U.S. law which was broken by the invasion of Iraq.
J. Peden, I think it’s the Law of You Must Have the Left’s Permission to Do Anything or They’ll Crucify You for It.
You can pretend to be illiterate, but you type better than I do, so….
If you beleive a law has been broken, feel free to take up the question and tell us what law was broken.
I read Yoo’s documents long ago.
As have I.
But cleo and sashal are a-trollin’ to distract from the point of the post, which is that Sullivan and his ilk talk about the need to detoxify the political environment at the same time that they accuse US officials of war crimes. Sullivan used to at least spend a little time focusing on the actual enemies of the US. I don’t know whether sashal or cleo ever have, so they may not be hypocritical about it, just with completely inverted priorities.
In their defense, (Did I just type that?) if they were really trolling, they’d have got all bent out of shape about my offering to have Sullivan blown up.
Then again, maybe it’s just part of that illiterate act.
Karl, in order to detoxify the toxins have to be removed or isolated…
[…] Posted by Stephen Green on 07 Apr 2008 at 11:44 am Andrew Sullivan: “Just as excitable offline.” […]
Admittedly it’s been a few days, but I saw precisely one Volokh Conspiracy comment about the Yoo memo — which was to the effect that the legal reasoning in the memo was not very good.
If that doesn’t make one a war criminal in the U.S., what does?
um, I’m hoping you aren’t volunteering to do the blowing. probably why nobody’s getting worked up about that. best not to think about Sullivan and blowing together. damn, I just did it again.
Concentration camps would be just the thing, I’m guessing.
Note that sashal reallly did not address my last comment, either.
There’s that old saying about preferring to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Some people prefer to curse the people for lighting the candle because it doesn’t meet their standards, while ignoring the darkness.
clever, Karl.
So who is the light in the darkness ?
Who is showing us, ignorants, the true way?
Cheney? Neoconservatives?
I hope you laughing too, together with me…
thanks maggie. I am drowning my mind’s eye in bleach, thanks to you.
Karl, in order to detoxify the toxins have to be removed or isolated…
How very … eastern bloc of you.
hey, JD,
here is what’ very russian
…in order to detoxify the toxins have to be removed or isolated…
Very good! Now the next step: call your doctor.
Is it just me, or is sashal suddenly sounding very nishi-like?
sashal, are you going to cite the laws you think were broken? It’s a pretty simple question and it’s to be expected if you’re going to fall on the side of accusing people of crimes. Failing to do so is rather beclowning.
Is it just me, or is sashal suddenly sounding very nishi-like?
You aren’t a real “intellectual” unless you speak a lot of languages. Of course, a postmodern Teratoma might be similarly-abled.
sashal,
Beyond the fact that you won’t respond to the obvious questions raised by others, the candle here is being held by the US. The darkness is Islamofascism. That this wasn’t obvious to you proves my point.
But I’ll totally back off that point when you supply me with a list of links where you have condemned the fantastic barbarism of our head-hacking enemies… and that list is longer than the list of comments you have made here obsessed with making the Bush admin. out as the true villains.
The problem we have here is how sexy it is to throw around flaming phrases like War Crimes and War Criminals and Torture Enablers. It makes teh outraged bats shiver like meth soaked squirrel monkeys. This is all reflective of the sort of language that came out of the Plame Flame. Remember “Frog Marching?” Of course, let’s not forget all of those indictments for “Treason” that were going to come skidding down the Mountain of Justice like some frat boy skiers.
In both circumstances the language doesn’t match the facts.Tthere is a really, really good reason why neither Bush or Cheney are facing any impeachment charges and why neither them nor Rumsfeld nor Yoo nor Gonzales nor Rove nor any other wingnuttery names cried by barking moonbats will face any such charges.
There are no facts to justify the prosecution.
The gleens and even semiconscious know this but it’s too sexy to stop using the phrases. They are like crack addicts, reaching for the heady rush of teh outrage, unable to stop regardless of the legal circumstances.
sashal, on the other hand, appears not to know any better, which is a pity.
Together, they deliberately created and authorized a regime of torture and other brutal interrogation methods that are, by all measures, very serious war crimes.
This word all, I don not think it means what you think it means.
no, Karl, I do not have the longer list of me claiming that sky is blue, and water is wet.
The obvious brutality of the Islamic terrorists and inhumanity of their actions can have my voice too joining in condemning and I even can do that non-stop.
The harder part is to find in some of our co-citizens the courage to understand and condemn the wrong actions of our own…
BTW, sorry I thought you were so narrow descriptive in the “lighting” department, my apologies.
BJTex, as a token for our future friendship and consumption of Vodka(no Absolute-Mexican kiss asses), try to enjoy this, good description of russian soul
Metric? Quadratic? Middle ages? Tasmanian?
Damn, there are a lot of measures, don’cha know
Nope, it’s not just you. I’d thought the same, but on further reflection I’ve got to say that Sashal has a better command of the language.
Poor Sully. I wouldn’t be the first to speculate that the drug cocktail isn’t doing anything good for his brain. Used to be such a nice fellow too.
Doesn’t it make it needlessly harder to condemn these wrong actions, if they can’t be articulated? In fact, I’d dispute (in fact it is exactly what I am disputing here) that someone who could not articulate what, specifically, was wrong, understood it at all.
And for sure, you’ll never get anyone else without a similar emotional axe to grind, to understand it either.
RTO,
would you crash a child’s testicles? Even if let’s say his father was a “suspected” terrorist.
Would you think our president is above the law, domestic and international? And would it be O’K for him to give such an orders?
Do you dispute that we broke the torture laws?
Just because nobody including the craven congress filed those charges , does not mean they had not been broken.
And here more proof
As soon as Soros’ 527’s ignited their synchronized “Hate Bush’s America” campaign back in, oh, 2003…I’ve been waiting for some wag to bemoan the “toxicity” of our electoral politics.
I espected it to be Tipper Gore, though. You know, because “Hate” isn’t a good thing for the kids to see on the tube after supper each night.
INstead of Tipper, we got another moralizer to demand and end to oversized toxin-footprints instead. Maybe Sully can create a “toxin-credits trading scheme” to match his passionate, political prognostications.
We may be having language difficulties here, I hope.
I’d prefer to speak, especially after we understand, about specificals, and not about hypotheticals (my best guess as to what you are getting at).
The President is not above the law. What orders?
Yes. I categorically deny that we have broken the “torture laws.”
It’s not up to congress, solely, to file charges. And you still haven’t told me what laws you even suspect had been broken.
aren’t we the signatory of the treaty concerning the war crimes and where the torture is regarded as such?
The testicle episode I took from the interview J.Yoo gave, where he was justifying such a treatment-president can give such an orders.
So… you don’t know, sashal?
How odd, you seemed so certain and full of righteous indignation.
the torture lasted weeks and even, according to some, months, and that the techniques included hypothermia, long periods of standing, sleep deprivation and multiple sessions of waterboarding. All these “alternative proceduresâ€Â, as Bush described them, are illegal under US law and the Geneva conventions. They are, in fact, war crimes.
That is bullshit. Except for the waterboarding, all of those were common hazing techniques when I pledged a fraternity in the 70s. And we did similar things to waterboarding, just less refined. We weren’t fucking war criminals, and to call that torture is an insult to victims of real torture.
Actually, the US adopted UNCAT with certain reservations moonbats don’t like to acknowledge.
Sashal,
Are we? If we are, but you don’t know it, you still can’t reasonably claim an infraction of the law.
We are signatory to a number of treaties with regard to war crimes and some address torture.
But of essence here is knowing that those treaty provisions have been violated. You can say, “The treaty says we may not torture.” But when I say, “We did not torture anyone,” how do you reply?
It comes down to the definition of “torture.” And no one, the Congress, the UN, the High Contracting Parties to the Hague and Geneva Conventions, no one has produced a definition that provides any meaningful guidance to an NCO on the battlefield, much less an Associate Attorney in the Justice Department or the President of the United States.
The laws on this issue, suck. But you and the “war Crimes!” people should keep yelling at the President, because that’s so much more likely to fix the problem than making Congress do their job.
What it comes down to, is this–on a battlefield, or in an interrogation room, it’s the emotional gut level impressions of what those crummy laws mean to a person ina uniform or to a DoD civilian interrogator, or to a CIA agent. Your guts don’t count. If Nancy Pelosi would like her guts to matter, she needs to step up and put them on the block, because until then, i’s the necks of those people doing their jobs that are litterally on the block. Being guilty of toture is punishable by 20 years imprisonment to death.
That SHOULD detoxify this subject. If you want to defuse it, you need to do a little research and find out what laws and treaties I’m referring to. I get a block of instruction on all of this every year, but apparely I wouldn’t know anyhing about it.
The problem with sashal is that he’s all about his emotions, and not much into the fact things. Which is a shame, because facts are what matters, not his feelings.
Yes indeed, folks here ought to visit Crooked Timber, Balkanization, etc., more often if you want to see the alternate universe some very highly educated left-wing academics live in. To try to converse with them is to know the true meaning of the phrase “a dialog of the deaf”. It really is a case of “ships passing in the night”. These people, who are some of the highest academic products of Western Civilization, are so estranged from same that they give vivid proof to Orwell’s statement that there some things that only left-wing intellectuals can possibly believe as “no ordinary
person could ever BE such a fool” as to ever hold or adhere to those self-same beliefs. Hence Bill Buckley’s statement that he would rather be ruled by the first 200 people picked at random from the Boston phone book than the faculty at Cambridge.
[…] a chief of staff to Vice Pres. Cheney is treated as a villain. On this point, I recall that Andrew Sullivan publicly predicted Addington will be indicted for war crimes — and that was before Rep. […]
Is crystal meth ruining your or the life of someone you love?