{"id":2541,"date":"2010-08-11T02:28:44","date_gmt":"2010-08-11T09:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=2541"},"modified":"2010-08-11T02:28:44","modified_gmt":"2010-08-11T09:28:44","slug":"obama-administration-screws-the-pooch-twice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/08\/11\/obama-administration-screws-the-pooch-twice\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Administration Screws the Pooch – Twice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Count me in President Barack Obama\u2019s corner.  However, I am not in his pocket.  When he or someone in the administration for which he is responsible does something wrong, I call it as I see it.  Here are two examples of this, I\u2019m sorry to say.  They are the trial of Omar Khadr and yesterday\u2019s ludicrous outburst by Robert Gibbs.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"11Khadr\"<\/a> Jury selection has begun at the military-commission trial for Omar Khadr at Guant\u00e1namo. Khadr is the Canadian whom we captured when he was fifteen<\/strong>, after a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002; among the casualties in that encounter were Army Sergeant Christopher Speer, who was killed by a grenade, and Khadr, who was shot up and almost dead (but the only only survivor on his side). He has been accused of throwing the grenade that killed Speer, though it\u2019s far from clear that he did<\/strong>. What is not in question is his age at the time, and that he was on the battlefield not because he was some rebellious child but because his father, an Al Qaeda associate who is now dead, sent him there<\/strong>. (Khadr was born in Toronto; I\u2019ve written about his case<\/a> before.) One reason Khadr has spent eight years\u2014more than a third of his life\u2014in Guant\u00e1namo is that he doesn\u2019t come from what most people would call a respectable family, which has hurt him in terms of motivating the Canadian government to get him out of there. But is the niceness of parents the basis on which we decide to imprison teen-agers? And where are our concerns about the rehabilitation of child soldiers when one falls into our own hands<\/strong>? (Michelle Shephard<\/a>, at the Toronto Star, has a piece on the former general who will be testifying as a medical expert in Khadr\u2019s defense.) <\/p>\n

Another thing that\u2019s not in question: at preliminary hearings, a former interrogator acknowledged telling Khadr, then fifteen, that a boy like him might end up gang-raped<\/strong> by \u201ca bunch of big black guys and big Nazis<\/a>\u201d if he didn\u2019t say what guards wanted to hear<\/strong>. Another described Khadr chained, hooded, and crying. Khadr has alleged that he was tortured<\/strong>. Yesterday, the judge at his tribunal said that statements he made in those circumstances were perfectly admissible<\/a>. What isn\u2019t admissible, then? And why would a court looking for the truth even want such statements<\/strong>? <\/p>\n

Why, really, did the Obama Administration decide that this case was the one to make the subject of the first full-fledged test of military commissions on its watch? A judge in a civilian court might at least have saved the prosecution from itself (morally speaking, if not in terms of getting a conviction at any price). If the Khadr case is a model of what Obama wants to happen in Guant\u00e1namo, it\u2019s an ugly one<\/strong>… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <The New Yorker<\/a>><\/p>\n

Rachel Maddow and Michael Isikoff discuss the trial, banning reporters because they published already public information, and spurious rule changes about coverage.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Frankly this is not the behavior I expected from Obama, and it is completely contrary to what he promised to do during his campaign.  This is what I would have expected from Bush.<\/font><\/p>\n

And on that note\u2026<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"11gibbs\" The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who irritated fellow Democrats recently by saying Republicans might reclaim control of the House in November, is once again in hot water with his own party, after lambasting President Obama\u2019s critics on what he called \u201cthe professional left.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

In an interview with The Hill <\/a>newspaper, published Tuesday, Mr. Gibbs unloaded his frustration with liberals who are themselves frustrated with the president.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hear these people saying he\u2019s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested \u2013 I mean, it\u2019s crazy,\u2019\u2019 Mr. Gibbs was quoted in the newspaper as saying.<\/p>\n

He went on to condemn the \u201cprofessional left,\u2019\u2019 saying: \u201cThey will be satisfied when we have Canadian health care and we\u2019ve eliminated the Pentagon. That\u2019s not reality.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Mr. Gibbs\u2019 remarks raced around the blogosphere and dominated much of the daily White House briefing, which was conducted Tuesday by his deputy, Bill Burton, who explained that the press secretary had a sore throat\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I think Gibbs\u2019 comments were unjustified.  Admittedly, there is a wing-nut fringe at the extreme of the progressive movement that is every bit as crazy as many of the Republicans\u2019 leading politicians, but an overwhelming majority of us are not that way at all.<\/font><\/p>\n

Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore discuss this.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I think they described exactly what is going on here.  The Obama administration is venting their discomfort that we have been right all along.  Gibbs took off the gloves with the wrong people.  He needs to go after the real villains here.  I am still in Obama\u2019s corner, but I am very disappointed in him today.<\/font><\/p>\n

Keith summed this up with one of his best special comments ever.  You owe it to yourself to watch this.  Since he expresses my view perfectly, I\u2019ll leave it at that.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object> <\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Count me in President Barack Obama\u2019s corner.  However, I am not in his pocket.  When he or someone in the administration for which he is responsible does something wrong, I call it as I see it.  Here are two examples of this, I\u2019m sorry to say.  They are the trial of Omar Khadr and yesterday\u2019s […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}