I watched Secretary Clinton grilled for 11 hours today and in the end I wept with rage at the shameful disrespect pukes threw at her. I was never so proud of our next President.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
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Reality-based commentary on politics.
Seriously, I watched the last hour and my takeaway is that some people, notably Chairman Gowdy, don’t know much about how email works. I’m also not sure why Republicans were trying to make our role in ousting Qaddafi a bad thing. First, they are usually quicker than Democrats to force someone out, and second I recall that as one of our successes in recent years as I believe it was accomplished without deploying our military.
We shouldn’t be ousting or promoting the ouster of middle eastern dictators. They contribute far more towards regional stability than alternatives.
…though I don’t mean to suggest we should initiate the overthrow of every dictator in the world.
Seeing as intervention and instability in the Middle East has led to neither.
The stuff that’s come out on Qaddafi- the school “tours” where he selected young girls to become sex slaves, used first by him and either kept prisoner or passed on down the line to other. Makes me totally ill.
Libya a total mess now, though it was also a mess before he was ousted.
We know that Qaddafi was a terrorist. We know he was responsible for bringing down Panam 103 in Lockebie. We know he had a long history of abuses like you describe. It appears to me that there are credible arguments for and against the 2003 decision to “rehabilitate” him.
Libya was a total mess before he gained power — a mess very much of our own making. We were, and some argue still are, addicted to Libya’s oil. Addicts do all sorts of self-destructive things to perpetuate their habit.
In the Middle East, we now seem stuck in the international version of the K-Mart rule — we broke it, we own it. ISIS exists because of the utter incompetence of the George W. Bush administration. We care about the region because of our continuing dependence on ME petroleum.
Whether intentional or not, I suspect that one factor motivating the continuing and escalating abuse of Hillary Clinton is the desire to deflect attention from the role played by the GOP in creating the entire ME chaos.
America has been playing Victor Frankenstein, creating monsters in the Middle East one after another, for generations. It was inevitable that at least one of them would turn on us.
The GOP eagerly played the Victor Frankenstein role most recently, and now pursues Hillary Clinton in hopes of keeping that skeleton buried under a mound of House-led manure.
They dumped several more truckloads yesterday.
And wouldn’t have existed if we chose to back Assad in Syria. Blaming GWB is a crutch – the current administration has fault in their existence too.
ISIS was borne in Iraq, from the chaos that ensued after George W. Bush destroyed the strongest regional obstacle to both religious extremism and Iranian expansionism. That catastrophic blunder was followed — after the infamous “mission accomplished” lie — by an equally incompetent attempt to impose a puppet government on the rubble that was Iraq.
ISIS turned to Syria after establishing itself in the vacuum George W. Bush created in Iraq by destroying Saddam Hussein on false pretenses.
There were very good reasons for the US decision to not support Bashar al-Assad. In no particular order, they include:
– Syria had long been a Soviet client
– Both Mr. Assad and his father were dictatorial tyrants in every sense of the words
– Mr. Assad was directly implicated in the assassination of Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri
– Mr. Assad was a long-standing supporter of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad
– Mr. Assad’s strongest supporter in the region was Iran
– Mr. Assad has been a long-term perpetrator of torture, imprisonment, and murder of political opponents
Your comment, attempting to obscure the role of the GOP and George W. Bush in pretty much ALL of the ME chaos joins the rest of the material dumped by yesterday’s witch-hunt as just more horse manure.
Thankfully, it appears that the immediate effect of yesterday’s most recent GOP abuses will be a corresponding rise in Ms. Clinton’s popularity.
Why is it any of our business if Assad tortures, is a dictator, or is supported by iran or russia? Why do we need to get dragged into proxy war because purported “enemies” of the united states want to start a beef with us? WE SHOULDN’T CARE.
Hamas and Hezbollah can do whatever the hell they want. I don’t care. They can’t attack marine barracks and kill US Marines if we don’t have a barracks there in the first place. We can project power without having to rely on boots on the ground more effectively today.
I don’t buy into the idea that we need to be world police and hold people responsible for wanton acts of incredible violence worldwide. It’s not our job.
If we supported an Assad State, ISIS, which is a fracture of the Al Quaida group that was fighting Assad, his people might have mopped up this whole problem a while ago.
Instead, we decided to go along with what our Saudi slavemasters wanted, and supported the rebels in their asinine Shia v Sunni pissing contest. I do not claim that GWB has no responsibility, but I don’t shoulder THIS disaster entirely on his shoulders. If someone starts a fire and then someone tries to put it out with gasoline, there’s more than one person to blame.
We shouldn’t care if someone else tortures, commits genocide, rapes and pillages, etc just because it takes place outside our manmade political boundaries?! Words cannot express how strongly and fundamentally I disagree with that attitude.
If it was just “Saddam’s a bad guy and bad to his people” would have invasion been justified without WMD? Haven’t more people suffered without him being there?
I recently heard an NPR report about Afghanistan and a US spokesperson again brought up “so girls can go to school” as a reason for our continuing involvement. I know that strikes a chord with many (including me) but wondering if that’s a reason for the need to have more US deaths.
With regards to the Middle East it’s always been about more than just oil. If we didn’t need their oil we still just couldn’t let the whole place blow up, they’re too close to so many of our interests.
Look Christopher, I know where you’re coming from. It’s disgusting. It’s reprehensible that the kind of crap we read in George RR Martin books is happening half a world away on a daily basis.
There is awful – pardon my language editors – there is awful, fucked up shit going on all over the place! We can’t be the world police. We just can’t! This is why we have a burgeoning military industrial complex that thinks 90 billion bucks on the F35 is a good idea but a garbage healthcare system is whateverrrr. If we decide to embrace our humanity and “do something” about all the awful stuff going on in the world, I get to look forward to sending my kids to a 40 year old school while we spend 2 million dollars to missile strike some idiot terrorist who lives in a shack in Northern Iraq. Because that fight is never going to end.
Christopher: Ever heard of the Etoro people in New Guinea? Please google them and read about their cultural practices regarding sexuality and marriage. Should we send in the troops? I am not asking this in a trolling, snarky manner. Should we do something about them? Why or Why not?
It seems pretty clear now that destroying functioning states, as happened in Iraq and Libya, can also have horrific consequences — and likely more horrific than state-sponsored atrocities.
Supporting Assad’s overthrow by the motley, inconsistent crew that is the Syrian opposition quickly leads to a stateless mess. That mess is almost certain to be fatal to the many members of the minorities protected by the Assad regime.
One might imagine, as I believe you christopher have imagined elsewhere, that we can destroy the state, call free elections, and presto! there’s a new state. That has clearly failed in Iraq where the elections have simply been a sectarian tool of the Shiite majority to hammer the Sunni minority. It has resulted in deeply corrupt and unlovable governments in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The result in Egypt has shown the “elections solve it route” certainly doesn’t work very well.
Pre-Enlightenment Europe was excessively fond of the most brutal forms of punishment and not only for their punishment value; Europeans were entertained by watching people being tortured to death. If we can, yes, we want to avoid a return to all the awful machinery in Europe’s older heritage. But few would think the best solution to European brutality and cruelty would have been an invasion by the Ottoman Empire followed by executing the European ruling class.
Essentially, though, that’s what we gave Iraq and Afghanistan. Offering it to Syria and expecting a different result is insane by the usual aphoristic definition.
…but what I was viscerally reacting to was the cavalier attitude of why should we care since it doesn’t directly affect us. OF COURSE we should care. What to do about it calls for more discussion. I reject that it has to be one side or the other committing atrocities. The worst we did at the birth of our country was chase Tories into Canada. I fundamentally believe that if we were consistent, zero tolerance for repression even by those regimes that seem to serve our interests, we will be more respected in the long term.
You write “The worst we did at the birth of our country was chase Tories into Canada”.
I encourage you to take another look at what we did in the reconstruction era in the deep South. There, too, we eliminated an immoral and brutal form of exploitation — slavery. Sadly, we replaced it with a different form of exploitation that was no less brutal, no less, immoral, and no less exploitative.
“Democracy” is not always successful. It requires MUCH more than just a technology for passing out ballots and counting the results.
I am less concerned about ends and more concerned about means. Will a given intervention make America fundamentally safer? Will it make the host country or host region safer? The first rule of medicine is get the patients consent and the second is do no harm. Both are rules we have failed to fully follow in the last decade and a half of war.
During Reconstruction, there should have been immediate land reform handing over to the newly freed much of the land on which they had toiled for no recompense. There should have been sufficient policing to prevent the kind of terrorism that deprived Blacks of the vote. There should have been enforcement of equal access to credit. There should have been some sort of coming to account of a system that bred people like horses or dogs, broke up families, broke skin with whips, and deprived people of even the right to read.
The suffrage amendment was passed largely as a cynical means of ensuring Republican control of the federal government. (Foner documents this in some detail in his volume on Reconstruction.) Instead, it should have been passed sooner and for the right reason and it should have been enforced. The justices on the Supreme Court in the post-Reconstruction period (when the so-called Redeemers took over Southern states) reinterpreted the 14th and 15th Amendments not to mean what they clearly meant; they paved the way for unequal treatment under the law and the denial of the right to vote. That should never have happened either.
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The above platform seems somewhat mild today. Unfortunately, 19th century white America was convinced of the inferiority and ickiness of Black people. It was offensive to many whites to be regarded as the social equal of former slaves. Republicans lost interest in the South and the result was terror followed by a sort of slavery-by-other-means regime (convict leasing, Jim Crow, sharecropping, terrorism).
We made darn sure ex-slaves could vote and a few even got elected themselves. It was what happened AFTER when the GOP struck a deal with the Devil to allow Hayes to take the presidency, though by comparison Jim Crow was a baby step in the right direction. Plus, you did notice I said at the birth of our nation when we were first setting up our self-government. We did not devolve into a Reign of Terror like France did. It can be messy, and I heartily agree with Churchill’s comment that it is the worst form of government, except for all the other forms that have been tried.
Yes, I suppose we should care, but I’m saying we’d better be awfully careful about how we express that caring. Applying leaches used to be a form of caring too.
Putin has claimed, I think correctly, that the choice is between ISIS and the Syrian state. There is no third choice. At tremendous expense, our military has gone looking for that third choice with paltry effect.
If we’re going to have “zero tolerance” for repression, what does that even mean? I mean concretely. Are you suggesting we should flood the region with American military, policing, and judicial personnel so that any repression can be stopped and prosecuted instantly? This would be an intervention maybe ten times the size of the Iraqi intervention and unlikely to end, I guess, until everyone in Syria learned to speak English and Syria applied for statehood.
Or does “zero tolerance” just mean that we all condemn repression from the comfort of our family rooms? Or does zero tolerance mean that we praise those who dislike repression and downrate those who hint of indifference toward it?
I’m sorry if I’m not being clear. I’m not sure Assad and ISIS are our only choices, but we can use our bully pulpit to call for elected governments that respect human rights. I have also said that whatever government in place that we are not actively at war with should exchange embassies with us. It should not be just the United States; it’s what the UN is for. I have also said repeatedly that it is not for us to initiate the overthrow of dictators, but we should consider arming locals who seek to if they are open to more democratic methods. Each circumstance is different and there may be some for which we decide both options are equally bad in terms of regime, but we should always care enough to consider the options because when good people do nothing, evil people can do anything.
in the GWB Administration. So I don’t understand what plan (or fantasy?) you’re thinking of that would produce a result better than Egypt’s, Iraq’s, or Afghanistan’s.
If someone had attempted to impose democracy on medieval France, for example, it would have been unlikely to be successful. Democracy requires a set of beliefs in what constitutes legitimate authority that you hold and mistakenly think are universal.
…especially the human rights part. Again I have said we should not initiate or impose, but when something like the Arab Spring arises we should make absolutely clear that we back people’s right to dissent. Too often we have propped up petty tyrants making us look like world-class hypocrites when it comes to just powers being derived from the consent of the governed. Then we wring our hands and wonder why in the world we are hated. This won’t happen overnight as consistency by definition requires several examples over a period of time, but we must without reservation seek to ameliorate humanitarian crises and show that we will accept any freely-elected regime. Only then will we have the respect of both friend and foe and it will ultimately make us safer.
except for the fact that they aren’t universal.
And forcing them to be universal — or worse pretending that they are — is no road to winning friends. In the Western tradition, we had things like the divine right of kings and (even in 19th century America) fear of mob rule particularly if accompanied by universal suffrage. Islamic traditions have a number of views of what constitutes legitimate authority that are not accepted by any county in New Jersey. Adherents of those traditions are more adamant than you that they are already universal.
…both historically and currently, suggests that given the opportunity to choose their own destiny, governance, etc., people of any cultural background will gladly take it. You still seem to think I want to force it, but I only want to give it a major push when the people in question decide they have had enough. If I were in favor of forcing it there is quite the list of countries we would have to invade all at once.
I guess we’ve now ascended to the realm of the unfalsifiable. Enjoy the fleecy clouds and harp music.
The concrete situation in Syria, with the actual people that live there, may be difficult to make out from the Empyrean. I guess that doesn’t matter because one cares.
I think this exchange demonstrates how difficult foreign policy questions are for the general public to process. America thinks of itself as the indispensable nation and on the side of the public good, and it’s ends, in my view, largely are. It’s the means where is realists tend to trip these ideals up by asking people to think deeper tha simply “we gotta do something” and “those bad guys gotta pay”. Mainly since the means-high tech weaponry and sustained military campaigns-are quite costly in lives and treasure.
I hate ISIS and support containing them via an air campaign, but it was hard not to be demoralized by the 60 Minutes report that showed the US spending $10 million a day on a bombing campaign directed at individuals and small scale targets that barely cost ISIS anything to recruit or maintain. It also showed an Iraqi army with the best equipment money could buy lacking the will to fight. They hardly could look less convincing as a force willing to retake their country for the cause of democratic government and decency.
Yes, Christopher, we should care, and there are a few ways to look at this. We can examine all the regions in the world and
a) Get involved in overthrowing oppressive leaders whose regime is committing the most heinous abuses of people
b) Get involved in overthrowing oppressive leaders whose dethroning would result in the most likely outcomes of safeguarding people from abuse
c) Continue this charade that the worst/only real violations by oppressive regimes just so happen to be in regions where we have vital interests and that have large petroleum reserves
Of course, as Bush et al argued we were facing an existential crisis of good vs. evil in the “War on Terror,” (an argument that to my knowledge Obama has not since rejected) where the future of humanity hung in the balance, I find it hard to support the notion that we should not bring back the draft and submit every able (in at least some capacity) person to serving this mission. Naturally, those who voted and support these interventions should be the first called upon to serve, with those who are opposed to these interventions being conscripted as America realizes that this mission will require more resources in lives, time, and money beyond just toppling a dictator here or there and that there are oppressive regimes and rogue bands of militias across the globe.
I argue that going for C is what makes it look like hypocrites, which leads to disrespect and ultimately causes us harm. I oppose using the draft to make a point. It should only be use in the most dire existential situations. I think World War II was the last conflict to meet that standard.
I fear you have misplaced cause and effect.
When the draft is compulsory — and its impact fairly distributed across the population — then America is less likely to embarrass ourselves. We are also far less likely to jump down the item C rathole.
In my view, pretty much any situation that demands armed combat ought to meet a level of existential threat commensurate with the proposed scale of the intervention. When a compulsory draft is in place, we do a much better job of ensuring that the resulting tragedy is as likely to hit the decision makers (including voters) as those whose blood is being so carelessly shed. In so doing, we personalize that existential threat to the family and friends of both voters and of “leaders” who so casually put somebody else in harms way.
I agree with you that WWII was the last conflict to meet this standard. Had the standard been in place for Vietnam (as opposed to the obscene discrimination about who did and did not get drafter), we might never have gotten involved in the first place. I note that, perhaps coincidentally, the Vietnam war was ended rather abruptly when it became clear that children of the middle and upper class were about to be as likely to be drafted as children of the poor.
The primary effect of our “volunteer” military has been to make our collective decision to go to war far too easy. We offer platitudes and lip service about our “deep gratitude” to our military, while we time and again kill somebody else’s children in senseless and hypocritical oil wars.
I have to agree with President Carter and his analysis of the situation. He paints a too rosy picture of life in Syria under Assad prior to the Civil War, but his analysis of how we solve this is far more viable than anything I’ve seen proposed from any candidate in this race, including, sad to say, Hillary and Bernie. I might add, as a terminally ill man and the only living President without a relative running in this election, he has no agenda other than a sincere desire to see peace.
Current policy exists in a fantasy realm where we can take Assad and ISIL out without alienating our allies or committing a massive amount of ground forces to the operation. In reality, where foreign policy decisions should be made, we have to pick which actor is less of a threat to regional stability. The answer is Assad. And if we can find a way to bring the FSA on board in a post-Assad coalition government, than we can unite the anti-ISIL elements together. But it will require direct negotiations with Russia and Iran to coordinate such an outcome.
…but it does seem to see Assad’s ouster as the ultimate goal, which I see as a good thing. We CANNOT give into whatever temptation stability might provide if it can only be provided by a tyrant.
There is a persuasive argument that keeping Assad in power is a threat to stability and ultimately helps ISIL, and that these two bad actors that are antagonistic toward one another rhetorically actually have a symbiotic relationship. Sec. Gates, Clinton, and (Condi) Rice have made that argument.
What President Carter is saying is slightly different. We can no longer pretend that the Baath Party, Iran, and Russia are irrelevant or non-negotiable entities that we can wish away or ignore. We have to allow a peaceful transition from Assad to a new government composed of his forces and composed of his opposition in concert against ISIL. This does mean tolerating stability over democracy in the near and possibly middle to long term. It also means letting a war criminal go unpunished, since he isn’t giving up power without conditions that allow him to keep his life and money. We did it for worse-Idi Amin, and did it most hypocritically with Ferdinand Marcos.
I would argue that the world would be safer if Saddam was still alive and in power in Iraq, and probably Qadaffi as well. And I can say that without endorsing either regime, but sometimes the devil you know ends up being better than the devil you don’t anticipate.
The world is much better off without them.
I have numbers. Far more Iraqi civilians killed in the last 15 years than under Saddam, a government that is a paper tiger against ISIL which you have to concede is far more brutal than Saddam, and a government that has stoked sectarian violence, persecuted Christians, and become a puppet state of Iran.
Libya is now ISILs beachhead into Europe, far more
Libyans have died in the chaos of the civil war than died resisting Qadaffis rule, and we now have five or six factions duking it out with none committed to liberal democracy. It is really arrogant, in my view, to assert we did these people a favor and then leave them with this mess. I strongly encourage you look beyond the rhetoric that justified both interventions and really analyze the results. I would argue they aren’t compelling proof that we did the right thing.
A great Atlantic piece that really lays out how all of the current bloodshed, violence, and millions displaced can be laid at the doorstep of that initial dumb decision. I strongly encourage you to read it and reflect on its conclusions.
I haven’t followed developments in Libya lately, but all I need to know about Iraq is that they had elections. The government we helped put in place by democratic means deserves now our strong support as they fight ISIS. There’s more to this than body count, but your argument only works if I were arguing ISIS is preferable to Saddam which I am most certainly not doing.
You write “All I need to know about Iraq is that they had elections”.
I’m pretty sure that the Soviet Union had elections throughout its history. I’m pretty sure that EVERY corrupt dictator the US has propped up, and most that we have opposed, had elections. I can’t help but remember your support for superfluous voter ID restrictions whose only practical effect is to suppress minority vote (hence their popularity with the GOP). It appears to me that you value the election ritual, even if made meaningless by manipulation, corruption, and oppression, over the result.
The elections in Iraq were as meaningless as the elections that put various puppets in office in South Vietnam, that occurred while the Shah held power in Iran, or for that matter were part of the Cuban political system under Castro.
When knowledge is restricted to such hopelessly naive bromides, why would the resulting opinions be anything but ill-informed?
a) it’s not, Maliki vote rigged and stayed in charge since we didn’t want Allawi back.
b) Maliki backed Assad in Syria and provided material support to that dictatorship in concert with Iran’s theocracy-no great democrat there
c) Maliki’s Shia supremacy basically alienated Sunni’s so much that they sided with ISIL against a central government that actively committed violence against them
Those facts are in the Atlantic piece, I would argue that what you think ‘all you need to know’ is insufficient information to make a value judgment on this question.
…that there has been a second election in Iraq that I completely forgot about. Is that the case? Either way, I stand by my absolute preference for free and fair elections. If what you describe above is true, then that is not what I am talking about and once again shame on us for interfering.
I finally had a chance to check on the 2014 election. From what I can tell multiple parties and candidates legitimately contested these seats. Iraqi democracy appears to be a work in progress, with progress being the operative word. Freedom House has bumped it up slightly on their index post-Saddam, but still with plenty of room for improvement.
I still absolutely stand by that free and fair elections are the best method of producing a government. I recall all those people proudly displaying their purple thumbprints when Iraq had its first election in decades at least. We all know that elections in places like the USSR and Cuba were shams, but I really was under the impression Iraq was legit. I absolutely do not value ritual above all else if it proves to be fraudulent. When I say free and fair elections, I meant it.
There are IMO good reasons to engage in wars of choice, such as humanitarian crises or pushing back on an invading army on the other side of the world. OTOH a free country should not as a general matter require its citizens to risk life and limb against their will as if we are the peasant subjects of a medieval king. The United States has the greatest military in the world without a draft, and while peaceful solutions are certainly preferable, I’m fine with it being used literally as a “force” for good when necessary. As an example, it was absolutely right for us to lead a coalition to push Saddam out of Kuwait in 1991, but completely inappropriate for us to draft additional members of the military to do it.
I would not argue that is a humanitarian war. It was within the national security interests of the United States to rollback Iraqi expansionism in a limited military campaign with specific objectives and narrow duration. It was an overwhelming success. Fortunately, with realists in charge like George HW Bush, Brent Scowcroft, and Colin Powell we had a truly multilateral coalition committed to using overwhelming force to achieve narrow objectives. We were not an occupying power and enforced the pre-Kuwait invasion status quo with a successful policy of containment.
Sanctions and no fly zones were incredibly successful in neutering Iraq’s regional hegemonic ambitions and WMD capabilities, as post-Iraqi Freedom analysis confirmed when no WMD’s were found. A world where we allowed inspections to proceed would’ve confirmed that containment was still working and Saddam would’ve continued to act as a counterweight to Iran, and a unifier of Shitte and Sunni Iraqi’s, and the Kurds would’ve enjoyed the same autonomy and American protection they enjoy today. A far better strategy than regime change, which should have been thoroughly discredited after the Iraq debacle and the dissent of Libya into anarchy. I’ll take the hit for backing the latter intervention, I will not back the next one.
It was the principle of sovereignty that was at stake – the same reason Hitler’s invasion of Poland resulted in UK and France finally getting fed up enough to start WWII. Conquerers will keep going unless nipped in the bud is what history teaches us. Yes, Kuwait has oil, but even if it didn’t it would be appropriate to push back. I for one wish that either we had deposed Saddam at the time or one of the times during the Clinton years when he violated the no-fly zones. The main reason I opposed GWB doing it was timing; post 9/11 our focus should have been entirely on Afghanistan. That said I am still glad that Iraq has an elected parliament even if their competence in preventing and fighting ISIS leaves something to be desired.
Between a volunteer military, drones, and reliance on special forces whom have tight lips and no room for journalists, we are increasingly relying on a military the has very little Monday-morning quarterbacking from the population funding it. We’ve already decided that the president doesn’t need congressional approval for war, and we’re getting to a point where all the president needs to do is call a room with a bunch of people sitting in front of computers and joysticks, and people die.
IMO the biggest difference between today and WWII is not necessarily the cause but the capability. We can kill better than ever before, but control – the other half of a successful war, is not our forte anymore.
As John Cassidy pointed out in the New Yorker, asking about today’s failed state is entirely prudent:
and I got really depressed about the next 4-8 years. The obstructionism and attacks Obama faced will be nothing in comparison to what we’ll have with Clinton in the White House. They might try to impeach on Day 1.
We can’t allow ourselves to be held hostage by a party that basically says either elect our people or we’ll make the country’s political life miserable for the duration of the term. I believe only one person has actually suggested impeaching on day 1 and the American people won’t stand for that.
Hlary”s strong suit is that she dealt with this before, and has the skill to navigate the obstruction map. I have to hand this to her.
Mr. Cumings, D-MD, blazed the trail (emphasis mine):
Perhaps its time to turn the tables and initiate legal action against the flagrant squandering of public funds on clearly partisan witch hunts by Republicans in Congress.
…but given that the House has to initiate such either way and the committee is doing the majority’s bidding that’s highly unlikely.
I’ve been watching the GOP transparently abuse the power of their offices since the Ken Starr fiasco. They did it to Bill Clinton, they did it to Barack Obama, and now they’re doing it Hillary Clinton.
When we reward unacceptable behavior by allowing it to go unpunished, we get more of it. When we Democrats failed to take ANY punitive action after the abuses of Ken Starr, we invited and encouraged repeats — and here we are.
In the private domain, a variety of remedies exist to discourage frivolous and abusive legal harassment. We need their counterparts to rein in today’s GOP.
I think I disagreed with you at the time about the new majority investigating Bush over Iraq in 2006, but in hindsight, they just spent $5 million proving that Hillary Clinton was friends with Sid Blumenthal.
We should’ve stood up for our constitution and country by holding real, investigatory hearings into what that administration did and why. Particularly as we learn more about how they refused reasonable negotiations that might’ve gotten Iran on our side with zero certifuges in 2003, might’ve gotten bin laden handed over before Afghanistan, and Intel that might’ve stopped 9/11. Far worse abuses and incompetence than the genuine mistake made in the fog of war here.
Steve Kornacki on MSNBC expressed a thought that I had yesterday afternoon. It was essentially that the Republicans keep forgetting how good the Secretary is in situations like these.
The Benghazi committe essentially gave Hillary free training for the upcoming Presidential debates.
Not national ratings, but in the swing districts we have to compete in. These guys are real idiots-especially Roskam whose in the district and town over from me. I remembered him being a dirty campaigner when I worked for Duckworth-whose security expertise and knowledge was a fantastic contrast yesterday-but I thought he was smarter than this. I’ll definitely sign up for a warm blooded Democrat to take him on. It’s too bad most of the others are in safe seats.
You must be a real treat at parties and family gatherings.
I agree with the line quoted by jaisu above. Gowdy wound up looking like Wile E. Coyote just before a plunge into the canyon, while HRC grinned at him. You could actually see his head assplode.
Fredrich’s really into Clinton, but he’s a nice guy.
If you really want to see someone overreact, say something critical of Clinton, and watch Tom come over and slap you across your face with his brand new white glove.
Does the Clinton campaign need to account for yesterday in its financial disclosure report as an “in-kind” contribution?
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n/t
You guys are hilarious.