Stepping on One’s Own Punch Line
(posted by Jim Henley)
I swear I heard, on the simulcast of MSNBC’s Race for the White House tonight (transcript should be available by tomorrow), Stephen Hayes trying to make the following pro-GOP dig.
He’s talking about Barack Obama’s anti-Gitmo comments yesterday, praising the fact that the country has, in the past, managed to abide by what passes for the rule of law and put terrorist malefactors in real prisons with real convictions in real courts, and Hayes says, wait for it . . .
Barack Obama should check. The indictment against Osama bin Laden was handed down in 1998 and he’s still free.
(Rough paraphrase.) I’d think the last thing any GOP surrogate would want to do is remind us that Osama bin Laden is still free. That’s apart from the fact that, if the standard is, what method catches bin Laden, we had three years of “the law enforcement approach” and seven years of the “conquer some random countries” method. Clearly if we’re supposed to judge the former a failure, the latter must be wanting too.
But beyond that, the notion of a Republican reminding us that his Party’s White House hasn’t caught Osama bin Laden in seven years gobsmacks me.
June 18th, 2008 at 2:44 am
Obviously it’s OK to not catch Bin Laden if you’re a Republican.
To review, the following are acceptable if you’re a Republican:
-Selling weapons to Shia theocrats
-Lying (under oath, above oath, next to oath, or whatever else) about, well, anything
-Hiring girls who worked for the DC Madame
-Using drugs
-Going AWOL
-Not knowing the difference between Sunnis and Shias
-Not catching the guy who knocked down 2 skyscrapers, 2 embassies, 4 planes, and a big chunk of the Pentagon
-Making Iraq even worse than it was under Saddam
-Any strategic blunder that puts Iran in a stronger position
-Torture
-FISA violations
-No bid/cost-plus contracts for cronies
-Being a crook
-Denying that you’re a crook even though you are
etc.
June 18th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Balko also pointed out how much Scalia was inadvertently giving away in his minority opinion. He said if Gitmo were closed, the U.S. would just send “unlawful enemy combatants” to more secret facilities in the CIA gulag, or resort to “extraordinary rendition” to authoritarian allies, so they could be tortured in some out of the way hellhole the American people have never heard of. As Balko said, this “We’ll just find some other way to torture them, and you can’t stop us–neener neener!” response kind of gives the lie to their sanctimonious claims that the U.S. doesn’t engage in torture, doesn’t it?
June 18th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
First rule of government: if a given means doesn’t achieve the desired ends, try the same means again, only harder.