Posted by
Mike Silverman on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 10:26:32 AM
The businesses that took TARP funds and now are desperate to repay it, should have done a better risk assessment on what it means to take that TARP money in the first place. But what is infuriating to me, is that we are talking about money coming out of our wallets, money that doesn't even exist yet that will put future generations into debt, money that some institutions want to give back ... GIVE BACK... OUR MONEY... but Obama and our wonderful Treasury Secretary are "refusing" to allow these businesses to pay it back. Even the most vile of loan sharks would be happy to get paid back the money they lent out. You know what this is? This is reverse extortsion. Instead of demanding money from these banks to "protect" them , Obama is demanding that they take money ... to make them complicit in the socialist schemes of an out of control regime. It's like the cop who doesn't want to take a payoff like other cops he heard about who have taken it and are now the slaves of the crooks who gave them the payoff, but they tell him he has no choice, take it or we make life hell for you.
Now, switching to another topic in the news..., we all know that President Obama should never have released the memos detailing interrogation techniques. CIA Directors past and present have said this was a very bad idea, to release these details and even had advised against it before hand. But Obama has an agenda that supersedes the safety of our country. It doesn't matter to him what people far more experienced and knowledgeable than him on this matter have to say, it doesn't matter to him that he has put a knife in the backs of the front line CIA operatives who were risking thier own safety to do what was needed to protect this country. It doesn't matter to him that all the men and women who died fighting terrorists have been stepped on by his personal prejudices and that this released information will set back the war on terror by increasing the boldness of organiztions like Al-Queda and Hamas and others who look at the United States as evil. Obama's agenda invloves poking his finger in the eye of George Bush and the past administration as much as he can to indulge his liberal extremeist propaganda and keep the left wing radicals who support him happy. Personally I don't want to see methods that work being removed from the potential tools that our CIA can use to obtain intelligence that will secure our county's safety. But that is not the position of President Obama. Still, if he felt he had to remove a set of interrogation options from the CIA .., he did not have to make the details available to the world. Instead, Obama could have conducted a very quiet review of the interrogation processes in use now and if Obama felt that methods were still out of line with legal definitions, then he could have instituted further adjustments to bring interrogation methods into line, adjustments that could have been applied quietly..., QUIETLY..., without fanfare, and without our enemies having any knowledge of any change,and if he felt the need to announce anything about it, he could very simply have said something like "I have reviewed the methods being employed and am convinced they are legal". Then he could have said that he would release information about past interrogations after a thorough threat assessment and determination as to whether it would pose harm to the nation. Then he simply could have kept the details under wraps for the forseeable future and that would have been a perfectly acceptable thing a president to do as allegedly the top man defending our country from harm. But for Obama the release of data about interrogations seems more like a game , or even moreso like a goat. Obama has been using President Bush as a goat for everything he wants to do that is the least bit controversial. I think he willingly released the information about interrogations as a way of keeping the Bush bashing alive so that he can perpetually use Bush as a rag to blot out his own socialist plans for the country domestically and abroad. Our freedoms as citizens of the US have not been damaged by the legally questionable methods employed in interrogation of captured terror suspects and known terrorists. The harsh methods which are debated as torture were employed as a last resort, and only in limited cases where CIA operatives were reasonably certain that the subject had information that could save our fellow citizen's lives. If anything, I would argue that these interrogations helped to assure that our freedoms were secured via the protection and insurance of our domestic tranquility, as is stated in the preamble to the Constitution as one of the reasons for establishment of the document itself. It's kind of funny, now, we're getting down into the mire of things like how many times being waterboarded is enough. It's one thing to debate if a process like waterboarding is torture, it's another thing to try to almost nitpick the number of times it is to employed before it's successful. This is what the release of these memos has done. We are now reduced to being armchair interrogators. Most all of the former CIA members I've heard talking about this have said the hard interrogation tactics worked. That's really where the line is drawn on that level. The cutting into the knees of our CIA professionals possibly puts rendition practices as a means of obtaining intelligence back online as a serious alternative. I looked around for instances in the past of any other country's leader willingly doing something like Obama has just done, deliberately making thier country weaker and more vulnerable by willingly exposing information vital to the safety of thier homeland. I can't find anything like it. Ultimately Obama has reduced the effectiveness of CIA interrogations, reduced the fear of our enemies over what might happen to them if they are caught, he has embarrassed our nation yet again with this sort of tabloid expose whch falls in line so nicely with his great apology tour of Europe and South America. Obama is wearing thin and has become one of the most divisive Presidents in US history. Now with President Obama's instigation of this episode we have the spectre being raised by the Obama Justice Department, and now Obama himself not ruling it out, of the possibilty of a war-crimes style investigation of everyone or anyone involved from the Bush administraton in making decisions to use harsh interrogation on captive terror combatants such as sleep deprivation, waterboarding, stress positions, and so on. This is nonsense. Ever since the impeachment trial of President Clinton, the left wing activists and hate mongers have been itching to get some sort of revenge on Republicans for that. If this goes forward, if a show trial investigation of President Bush and his staff or administration is actually instigated, this will be nothing more than a childish temper tantrum from the left out of pure hateful vengeance and nothing to do with any love of the Constitution and freedom. It will spell doom for the Democrats in the next election cycle, as if they haven't already made clowns of themselves in the past 90 days.
- Mike Silverman