johnbyronkuhner.com

Is there any way Mr. Obama can hire this guy in some capacity?  How about press secretary?  So sensible, such auctoritas.  He should just keep on talking.

A friend of mine with “national security connections” said that the whole national security apparatus was refusing to serve Obama and was refusing to provide intelligence: the CIA, military, FBI, Homeland Security, you name it.  Sounds like nonsense to me, but if it’s true and no one in any of those positions cares to defend the lives of their wives or mothers or children, then it may be time to start over anyway.  If we were at that stage it would hardly be Obama’s fault.  But anyway, I doubt that any human being worth anything would refuse to save a life because he had a democrat for his president.

But why are people saying such things?  How can people who are respected in our society be so disconnected from truth or honor?  It’s like Cheney’s speechwriter Thiessen claiming “the Obama administration is no longer interrogating terrorists, no longer capturing them, and trying to get them” a day before the head of the Taliban – a higher-profile figure than any the Bush administration ever captured – was taken into custody.

Anyway, the Powell interview above is a refreshing, sensible alternative.  Facts, facts, facts.

When you hear people say all over the world, “Bin Laden was the first terrorist… Bush was the second terrorist,” this is what they mean.  If our elected leaders do not want to abide by the Geneva Convention, they should pull out of it.  If they want to torture American citizens they should write new laws and pass them, amend the constitution to eliminate the strictures against “cruel and unusual punishment,” and do all the things necessary to turn us from the bumbling Republic of laws we are to an old-fashioned efficient Neronian horror like Rome.

I have always liked Obama’s refusal to engage in retaliatory partisan government.  Bush fires all the U.S. attorneys so he can replace them with Republicans: Obama does not, though he could at least rehire the democrats who lost their jobs.  But when it comes to American elected officials violating our not only our laws but our treaty obligations, how can we let this go unnoticed?  If we continue to act as though we stand above the rules, we are just heaping coals on our own heads.  Do you remember years ago when one of the reasons for removing Saddam Hussein was “he tortured his own people”?  People described the horrible things done in Saddam’s prisons like Abu Ghraib indicating that they believed that such actions delegitimized his rule.  But if we are exactly the same, then who will remove us?  “What does it profit a man to conquer the whole world and lose his soul?”  The only difference is that looking around the world we think we see no one powerful enough to do something about it.  This is the essence of atheistic immorality.

Let us be clear about one thing: torture works.  But there must be things that we are unwilling to do even if they bring success.  All a man’s goodness is found here.

And what in the world is the former vice president of the United States doing parading himself around like a Palinite media whore?  The more he justifies himself, the less defensible he is.  Can’t he just take a job lobbying for Saudi Arabia like other American heroes on paid retainer, Bob Dole and the rest of them, shilling for men who despise us for a few hundred thou a year?