Mother and father of slain Cole sailor write an open letter to the President. An excerpt:
President Obama, now I fear these sailors who died in the service of the United States will be abandoned again. It will be one more tragedy in a long list of tragedies in the Cole attack. With the suspension of the trials at Guantanamo Prison, we are deeply and painfully concerned that Abd al Rahim al Nashiri and Tawfiq bin Attash will evade justice like all their terrorists friends did in Yemen. These men had a significant role in the terrorist attack that killed my son and 16 other sailors. They are in US custody. We have a right to expect a just outcome. However, our fear is if the terrorists are tried here in our federal courts, they will go free. The bias in favor of the defendant built into our system of criminal justice becomes magnified and disproportionate in terrorism cases which are in fact not crimes but national assaults.
Regardless of one’s view on the definition of torture, there is evidence they murdered American citizens in cold blood. I don’t see how that fact can be ignored and justify their release. The debates revolving around the use of torture does not lessen the severity of the heinous crimes that they are charged with. We have had to watch helplessly as the killers of our son and his mates were tried and then one by one released by the Yemeni regime. I begged our leaders to stop that parody of a trial at the time. They did not. We implore you not to put the families through that nightmare again.
Our Representative and Senator Cornyn along with some other senators are actively working on other issues for us in regards to the attack on the USS Cole. His office has informed us that there will be a Judicial Hearing this year on those issues. It’s my heartfelt hope that you President Obama will stand with us and support that hearing.
We the families of these forgotten heroes have been denied answers for years to the most basic questions. My wife and I were so happy to read in the paper that the goal of your administration is to make our government as honest and transparent as it could be. It was a breath of fresh air. Your words gave us hope that we may actually get answers to our questions after eight long years.I would also like to ask you if you could personally look into the issue of why the Cole Families have not been able to collect the monies awarded to us in a Federal Court under the Death on the High Seas Act. It’s been two years since our lawyers won that case. And we are still waiting. The monies awarded were only for our loved one’s future wages. How can our own government ignore a Federal Court’s verdict?
The Justice Department has taken issue with releasing the funds from the Sudan which provided assistance for the attack on the Cole. Our own government is fighting us again. And how ironic is it that we were told that the Justice Department is there to help victims of terrorist attacks. We are not asking for taxpayer monies. I never have and never will. We want the nations that supported Al Qaeda such as the Sudan and Yemen to be held responsible, not the American taxpayer. I think that if the 9/11 families had been treated this way, that there would have been a national outcry against such callous treatment from their government. But they were a much larger group of victims than us and they had the press focused on their plight.
Your assistance on these matters would be greatly appreciated.
Don’t hold your fucking breath.
This Muslim family from Yemen also has some questions on the release of Guantanamo detainees.
Baracky’s already apologized for the Cole I think. Case closed.
Explain, please, assclown, what justice would be in this case. How is justice best served here?
#4
You’re beclowning yourself, ass.
Hey, Baracky doesn’t particularly like the military (nor its grieving military families) and “he won” so just LAY OFF.
He won.
The Cole, that is ancient history! Barack’s ideas of the world not much different than Jimmy’s
This is a confusing thread. Did something used to be at #4?
Thanks, hf. Where it went, I don’t know, but that’s probably why I was accused of nuking a comment.
Obama: This is just the old tired failed politics and ideologies of the past.
Obama: I won let me eat my waffle.
President Obama [shudder] is obviously more concerned with justice for those who hate America rather than, you know, American citizens and soldiers…
It’s a feature, not a bug…
Were so effed in the middle east it’s not funny. The muslim world has correctly read hime to be a weak-as-water pansy, with little spine for conflict, a latently anti-semitic outlook that’s amenable to their point of view, and a desire for the world to love him…
The Islamo-fascists are most dangerous when they percieve weakness. He has raised the likelyhood of increasing terrorist acts, hopefully overseas only, by his policy posture…
Just as Clinton policies set us up security-wise for 9/11, Obama is doing the same.
I hear the man speak about Gitmo, trials, detention, rendition, justice, security and so on, but I can’t seem to put it all together in a coherent strategic bundle, something that actually makes sense as a program on which to move forward. Truth is, I have no idea what Obama believes with regard to the US overarching strategic stance in the world. Somehow though, whatever complete and fully articulated stance he may take, it must include having the “respect” of the world’s popular opinion (not to say “love” but damn nearly so, it seems), without regard to the opinions of particular governments as they see their interests. It’s almost as if, should the mythological “Arab street” think well of us, he’d be happy and think he’s gotten somewhere, all the while individual Arab governments curse us and work against our interests at every turn. Or perhaps it’s the praise of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that he’s after? It’s not easy to tell.
I think… I think he wants to empower the world to hold us accountable. That’s the most gracious way I know how to put it. Part of that is paying deference to popular opinion in a very overt and showy way I’d guess. Baracky doesn’t care so much about convincing foreign peoples that we are beholden to their opinion of us, he wants to convince Americans that it is right and proper that we are beholden to their opinion of us. Particularly to the opinions of the more subjugated dirty socialist ones. He’s no friend of liberty, this Baracky dipshit person.
Can we look forward to one day waking up to find that the US has agreed to join the International Criminal Court, hf? I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t be surprised if it happens.
I’d guess he has to make some moves on the military first. Once he’s sufficiently broken their spirit it’ll move to the top of the agenda I think.
Here’s an example of the salted earth sort of lens you have to watch Baracky through I think… when the next president doesn’t give a groveling interview to an Arab tv station first off, that will be a sign of renewed hostility is what our dirty socialist media will tell us. That’s Baracky’s game I think in a nutshell.
I agree with this commenter over at Belmont Club that the US Military is the only institution standing in the way of the Prog/Socialists dream for the USA. They are going to do everything they can to defang it so they can get on with the perfecting of all humans.
There are other obstacles in their path, such as the 4 million deer hunters with in 4 hours of DC mentioned yesterday. Breaking the military to heel is however the top priority to accomplishing their long term goals.
I expect there will be an attempt to place some kind of “political officer” into every level of the service to keep an eye on troublemakers and inject their special poison of “distrust in all others” throughout the services.
“I expect there will be an attempt to place some kind of “political officer†into every level of the service to keep an eye on troublemakers and inject their special poison of “distrust in all others†throughout the services.”
You mean, commisars like Kruschev was during WWII..?
“Political officers”. That’s crazy talk and a waste of bandwidth, to be blunt about it. Personally speaking, I’d prefer to have a more grounded discussion of the President’s actual policy pursuits, which are scary enough, if mistaken in themselves, as it is.
We’ll see. The military is just another community what wants organizing is how Baracky sees it I think.
JPost on Biden’s Foreign policy talk at NATO**
The Obama admin has already put an end to early insertion of larger American troop presence into Afghanistan, saying something to the effect that “we’ll first need to re-evaluate our overall strategic goals there before proceeding”. I think that’s a mere cover for a positive sense in the DoD that ever growing supply line pressures through Pakistan must be fixed with new supply lines through Russia, and the __Stans and possibly another (better) supply line through Georgia, Azerbijian, Caspian, Turkmenistan on to Afghanistan first. They rightly don’t want to put more people in harm’s way when they know they will have trouble supplying them with the material they’ll need to do their jobs. What the hell does “climate change” or Gitmo have to do with this? Not a damn thing that I can see. Meanwhile, Pakistan releases A.Q. Khan, continues to see jihadi attacks on it’s citizens across the country (bombing of Shia mosque in the Punjab just a day ago), refuses to co-operate with India on the Bombay attacks, and generally gives the appearance of a nation on the brink of going over a cliff.
#15 Sdferr:
I think President Obama has been on campaign mode for all of his life, so much that he cannot conceive of what to do with the office he has won other than position himself to run for the next office.
I think he is still in that mode, and hasn’t realized that this is it, this is the last office, and that he is ‘the decider’, that ‘the buck stops here’. And I am thinking that he doesn’t have the foggiest clue about what he has to do, that now he has to perform, that there is no patron to cover for him.
The curtain has opened, the footlights and floods are on, the audience is out there – and he hasn’t given any thought to his lines, and he has been so sheltered through his political career that he can’t even ad-lib. And the show is going to run 24/7/52 for four years.
as an anonymous commenter said ‘I knew this administration was going to be a trainwreck; I just thought they’d get out of the station first’.
#24 Sdferr:
And that is real scary – going to Joe Biden for the voice of sense.
Perhaps we don’t need to repair our relations with Europe and the world; perhaps they need to repair their relations with us.
Mikey, I think you’re pretty much right on the mark there. But we know that our government must move forward, there are thousands if not tens of thousands of people working these issues and others as we speak. They can’t wait for the President to get up to speed. So decisions get made willy-nilly whether he grasps their implications or no. Problems come when, as happyfeet excellently pointed out in the Trig troofer thread w/regard to DTV, no-one knows what the rules are, arbitrary policy lurches back and forth pull the ground from under anyone trying to move forward and everything jerks to a sudden and unexpected halt, whether these come in the foreign policy sphere or in the private economic sphere.
Ok, last comment and I’ll stop wasting Jeff’s bandwidth.
The Obama administration is making all decisions on a political basis of whether it advances the power and objectives of their Party and Obama.
From yesterday,
The stimulus bill is a political payoff. Those that voted for it and those set to collect from it have now been bought. Their price has been paid and they will now have to dance to Obama’s tune.
A President can do much to shape the military as long as they don’t care how damaged it gets. The top Democrats have shown and spoken of their hatred and loathing of our armed forces.
My belief is this administration will try to break them in order to exert absolute control. Resignations, forced retirements, politically based promotions. They have the means. I believe they have the will to use it too.
That’s all, bye.
Hey geoffb, don’t take that comment personally, please. You’re a good a valuable commenter here. Nearly everything you’ve written in 28 is useful and defensible. For that matter, 20 wasn’t objectionable in general terms, only the “political officer” part so far as I’m concerned, at least to the extent that it intended “political officer” as nearly akin to or analogous of the Soviet Union’s late unlamented Communist party officers placed throughout Soviet bureaucracies and militaries to keep an eye on “anti-party” goings on. I just don’t see the possibility of a one-party state in the US under the current likely set of possibilities. That’s all.
#28 geoffb:
I hear you.
And at some point it will be brought home to President Obama, as it was brought home to Shakespeare’s Henry V, that when he gambles on the world stage, the cards and chips are made of blood and bone.
That is why the the St. Cripin’s Day speech (We few, we happy few, we band of brothers) has its power, where the Harfleur battle-cry (God for Harry, England, and St. George) doesn’t have the power.
Young King Henry V realizes the heavy responsibility he has at Agincourt; whereas he didn’t realize it at all when he invaded France. He realized at Agincourt, as he went amongst his soldiers in disguise, that it wasn’t about him at all.
“Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.” Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington.
“How can our own government ignore a Federal Court’s verdict?”
Anyone have an answer?
They can – so long as they (a bureaucracy) does not want to pay a fine – or maybe not have that money in their budget.
If an agency has to pay a fine, that comes out of their budget, and if the money for that year is already spoken for (in various line-item ways), then they have to go to Congress and get an appropriation to cover that. And if Congress won’t pony up the cash, then that agency can’t pay.
When it actually comes down to specified agencies and their budgets, they just can’t transfer dollars from one account to another – they have to ask the legislature for permission to spend less on something-or-other, or to give an extra appropriation to cover these kinds of costs.
At least, that is what I know from how states work – you can’t just transfer a savings in equipment procurement for the year and put that extra to pot-hole filling. No matter how much sense that makes, you can not do that kind of juggling of accounts. That is to prevent corruption.
So far as I know.
I’m sorry Sdferr.
It was the, waste of bandwidth, what with thor and parsnip wallowing in wastage that got to me.
Some of the things that have happened to friendships and relations with relatives over Obama have me on hair trigger. Been called racist, more than once, to our faces, for voting for McCain/Palin. Old friendships splintering.
Mikey NTH, I hope and pray Obama wakes up to his responsibilities to the Nation and puts them before both Party and self. I will email you this weekend.
Now I have to take my wife to the local bookstore, so as not to waste the warm weather today.
*…. Obama wakes up to his responsibilities to the Chicago machine that got him the white house and puts them before both Party and self. *
I’d say that’s a more likely outcome right there.
Geoff, your post on The Perfectability of Mankind was like a short version of Sowell’s “Conflict of Visions.” Well done.
“crazy talk”
A year ago, I was sure that white Americans wouldn’t elect an adherent to Black Liberation “Theology.” But here we are.
I haven’t read that one by Sowell. It will go on my Amazon list. Thank you.
They totally fucked that up by calling their son a hero. Everyone knows that there is only room for one hero – and it aint ever gonna be a soldier.
I’m happy to admit I was wrong to write the “waste of bandwidth” phrase. Wrong. Simply. It’s an easy and stupid phrase. I’m stupid sometimes. Very. Really. Buck up geoffb! Fight on man, fight the good fight that most of your fellows don’t even realize needs the fighting. Don’t quit on account of a schtup-nagle like m’self and ‘s words. But don’t get carried away either. Stay on the grounded side of things. In all likelyhood, in chasing the truth, you’re a better man than I.
“political officer” did come out farther than I meant it. I was thinking of political correctness and enforcement thereof.
If we get to the Soviets then there will be only 3 power centers, Military, Intelligence, Party. With any 2 more powerful than the 1 other. Constant in the background warfare between them. Nothing for the Legislative or Judicial as they would become mere puppets. We are not on that course.
As far as better man and all. Everyone here, most likely, has far more formal education than I. My life didn’t go that direction though that was not the original plan. I find all the comments and commentors here to be enlightening and informative even the trolls on occasion.
geoffb:
A formal general education is a good start, but if it doesn’t go any further, it isn’t much. What really makes the educated man is that he doesn’t stop learning. Even a specialized education, such as law school, only gives a sip of what the law is about and if it works it teaches you how to frame a question so you can look it up. I do utility law, and that wasn’t covered in law school – they couldn’t, there wasn’t time, they had to settle for a broad sweep. And after about five and a half years of doing utility law there is so much I do not know (and areas like telecom that I do not wish to know more of).
Even a history major doesn’t give much more than an overview. If you want to know more you have to read and speak to people.
Don’t ever give up learning, and do not ever look down on yourself for not having a formal education.