Friday, December 21, 2007

3 Things I learned Tonight

Perhaps learned isn't the correct word. From the NewsHour tonight.

Harry Reid is not a leader. Leaders extol the virtues of their side, their vision, while highlighting the incorrectness of their opposition. Harry Reid is not proud of his party or its values, because he never talked it up during the painful interview with Ray Suarez. Even Suarez didn't know what to do with Reid, he is such a lame interview.

Given every opportunity to defend his party and place the "blockage" squarely on the shoulders of the GOP, Reid failed. Harry, the problem is that the GOP refuses to change their position. While you, Senator, have flopped and prostrated the Democrats trying to appease the inflexible Republicans. I guess the values of the Democratic Party aren't worth fighting for, the evidence seems to indicate that the Leaders of the Party are more concerned with moving towards the positions of the GOP than fight for your values.

The second thing I learned was that the Democrats simply are too inexperienced in being a majority party after 13 years, that they've discovered that it's easier to block the other party than to pass your own legislation. Which they should have known, seeing as how they did that to George W Bush so many t i m e s s s , in t he p... a. s .. t 7, oh never mind.

And third, there are a lot of obvious questions being left out of the CIA Tapes case. Like, why weren't these two al Qaeda operatives at Gitmo in the first place? That seems like an easy way to get around US laws, doesn't it? Like, why would they only tape two al Qaeda operatives interrogations, and not all of them, or at least some of them, like Khalid Sheik Mohammad, or should we just take them at their word? If Harriet Meiers was there when they were discussing destroying the tapes, she being the Presidents legal counsel at the time I believe, why would we believe that Bush knew nothing about the tapes or their destruction when his personal legal representative was in the discussions?

Could we suppose that the fact that they were discussing this at such a high Administration level suggest that perhaps somebody recognized that destruction of evidence could be construed as obstruction, as a cover-up, that whatever dubious legal excuses they offered to the judge today, that maybe somebody knew this was inherently wrong, and the meetings were meant to provide cover for those involved-see we said they shouldn't destroy those tapes-as well as work on a good and unified storyline to explain it?

Too bad the press never asks those questions. Like given how this latest revelation has played out over the past two weeks or so, why should anybody have the least bit of confidence in an internal investigation by the same agencies involved in the cover-up, like how could this Justice Dept investigation have any credibility, given the immeasurable lies and I don't recalls that they have pawned off on us?

That's the perfect lawyerly counter to whatever justifications the Bushies give for conducting an investigation, in fact. Seeing as how so many of you can't recall much of anything in the way of names, dates, actions, meetings, e-mails, advice, arguments, policies, practices, and so on, it's clear that you couldn't possibly conduct a thorough investigation. We need an outside and credible investigator for the job. And not George Mitchell, please.