Actually Michael James, given that a previous head of the Iraq operation for the US said that he would win because ‘my god is bigger than their god’ and that both Bush and Blair saw their mission in religious terms, I’d say equating mass murder with religious fulfilment was on both sides.

As for considering the murder of innocents a standard tactic,well that’s pretty much area bombing standard procedure isn’t it.
Pot kettle etc but dont let that stop you in the pursuit of collateral damage

As to executive privilege mezza 1976, ‘there isn’t much precedent’ for it after office ….you can say that again. None at all in fact. Indeed in 1974 Nixon was to be put on trial before President Gerald Ford pardoned him. If there is capacity for impeachment within a system, there’s capacity for prosecution.

Water torture could mean any number of the water based torture methods that have been invented in centuries past.

Water-boarding is specific term for a specific practice. Unsavoury definitely, euphemistic hardly.

Refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Bourne

It’s (as loosely defined) as is the power claimed by the President of the United States and other members of the executive branch to resist certain subpoenas and other interventions by the legislative and judicial branches of government.

Even though there isn’t much precedent for claiming EP after you have left office - You wont see Cheney or Bush there. Unless the Supreme Court has something to say about it (although Nixon found out they always don’t rule in favour of the President). And given Bush’s penchant for claiming EP, I don’t think he’d waive it anytime soon.

As for the investigation - the Post has it that the White House is keen to avoid a partisan battle - merits of it aside (and many claim it was in the planning stage only and not covert operations).

I’m sorry but I’ll have to disagree although god knows I don’t want to be an apologist for Harris. I can raise a number of arguments against the bombing offensive on tactical/startegic grounds alone. Forget the morality my opinion was that it was an ineffective use of resources.

For example allocating say another 24 VLR Liberators would have closed the Atlantic air gap years earlier & saved countless ships & sailors.

One UBoat factory claimed they did not lose a days production throught the was despite many attacks until the very last days of the war.

High explosive delivered by unguided weaponry from 10,000 feet or higher is pretty inefficient.

Scary but inefficient.

I don’t mean this as a criticism of the the brave airmen involved but just an opinion with the advantage of hindsight

If it was merely a test of incendaries surely they’d had enough practice by that time plus why involve the USAF.

The intelligence of the time indictaed 110 factories, 50,000 workers. As Germany’s 7th largest city of the time is beggards belief that there wouldn’t be a strategic target. There was an artillery manufacturer plus chemical works & high end optical factory. There was possibly a chemical factory which also raised the spectre of ‘gas” production.

Dresden was also a rail hub an attack could be seen as supporting an offensive in the east by the Red Army.

I’m not saying the intelligence was factually correct but there was enough information to mount an argument that an attack would fit the strategic aims of both the RAF & the USAF.

Cheers

In WW2 Britain was facing extinction. Terrorists will never threaten the existence of the USA. It was repayment in kind and the targets always had an underlying military objective.

I say:

Dresden. No military or strategic value. More civilian casualties than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It got flattened because Bomber Harris wanted to try out his incindiary ordnance.

I’m not trying to draw some kind of moral equivalence between the Nazis and the Allies, but nuances are important.

M

A coup d’etat was staged in the US on 22 November 1963 and since then the decisions that matter have been made by (almost exclusively) men who are not accountable in any recognised sense of the word.

The Congress for its part is hopelessly compromised by its accession to the policies of the past several years. There will not be a proper inquiry because to have one would expose them for their complicity in the illegal wars, the torture, the undermining of the US constitution, the kangaroo courts etc etc.

One of the terrifying things is that the Howard government passed a slew of legislation equally repugnant to the notion of a liberal democracy under the law without a peep from the then Labor opposition who have done nothing since coming to power to amend those assaults upon our liberties.

They probably assume that there are enough Michael James’ around who will parrot anti-Muslim idiocies long enought to keep people from asking what is happening and being done in our name, from Palestine to Afghanistan to name but two recent examples.

There is a significant difference between actions that might be on shakey grounds legally & outright illegal conduct.

For democratic government to work ultimately we are reliant upon the ethics of those in power. They must reasonably follow the law or the system breaks down. By the time illegal acts become apparent it is quite often a case of “too late she cried”. There must be an inherrent honesty within the system.

It is becoming more & more apparent that the Bush Administration didn’t just bend the rules but intentionally & with malice aforethought acted contrary to law. It took advantage of the “war on terror” to some how give this conduct a validity it could never have.

Not only was it illegal activity but the raison d’etre was false. It did not make us or the USA safer. It did not advance the war on terror. It failed as an activity at the cost of maintaining their own legal system.

To advance the argument of carpet bombing in WW2 as an excue is as irrational as it is odious . In WW2 Britain was facing extinction. Terrorists will never threaten the existence of the USA. It was repayment in kind and the targets always had an underlying military objective. The process was as much an outcome of the weaponry available.

BTW since neither Britain or German civilians morale collapsed under the effect of “terror bombing” it show how ineffective terror really is as a weapon.

The war on terror is a misnomer. It is acts of criminals and as has been shown in the past, is best defeated by “police” actions. It is illegal activity. Breaking the law because somebody else is is neither logical or effective in defeating them.

What you are arguing is that you want the police to halt burgalry by breaking into houses?.

Your comment “I hate to be glib, but sometimes you have to do a little evil to defeat a greater evil.” is not only glib but wrong. I have found over the years that every hard problem usually has an easy solution……that doesn’t work & that’s what you are suggesting. A solution that doesn’t work.

The reason is that it would set a very nasty precedent for each outgoing president to suffer trial by smear and innuendo by the incoming administration who would be diligently digging away at the secret papers of the previous administration, looking for anything which might be in the slightest legally shaky.

I am not sure that Obama’s administration would welcome such scrutiny when their terms are up in 2012 or 2016, following years of sustained combat operations, and a possible conservative administration decides that payback really is a bitch.

Plus, as he mentioned, some of the current Democrat leadership in both Congress and the Senate might come out looking decidedly dirty as part of the collateral damage of such a trial.

I am sure that the Bush Administration did things which were possibly on poor legal ground; however the same can be said of Clinton, Bush senior, Reagan, Carter (that is if he actually did anything while in the Oval Office), etc.

In addition, if they try and place Bush or Cheney on trial, how will Obama and Co respond to the statement, that will have a pile of resonance with middle America, that some rules were bent to stop terrorist attacks that would have killed innocent American lies?

It would be hard for Obama’s administration to avoid the claim that it cares more for terrorist’s rights than for the lives of US citizens.

The US is engaged in a war against people who seem to equate mass murder with religious fulfilment and who don’t always follow the rules of warfare. Unfortunately the democracies at such time find themselves having to stretch the envelope of what is possible to fight such an evil.

During WW2 the democracies undertook carpet bombing of civilians as part of the total war philosophy, conducting acts that were morally repugnant then and now, in destroying a much greater evil.

Similarly today, the US and the democracies are fighting against a great evil that considers slaying of civilians, either Muslims or infidels, to be a standard tactic in their war on modern western civilisation.

Sometimes the line between doing what is right and doing what is expedient gets very blurred, especially during conflicts.

I hate to be glib, but sometimes you have to do a little evil to defeat a greater evil.