What was up with Mitt Romney promising to "double" Gitmo -- I mean, what does that even mean? I think it's weird that this kind of moment where a candidate for the presidency reveals that he has no clue as to what he's talking about with regard to a high-profile, controversial national security issue doesn't count as a "gaffe." Maybe if he'd sighed too much or something.
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Double Skim Gitmo Latte
16 May 2007 10:05 am
Comments (79)
it means "invade Cuba!"
It's the thought that counts. All you have to do is convey the right emotion, the sentiment that you'll somehow be super-duper tough, and your supporters will fill in the blanks for you later, coupled with indignation that anyone could pretend the proposal wasn't well-thought out in the first place.
The reason they get away with this is that Democrats are simply not that great at ridiculing the other side. For some reason they always act like it's beneath them.
Well, at least it's a step back from his Muslim Brotherhood = terrorists line that also wasn't a gaffe.
Doubling Gitmo is for wusses. Giuliani would take Gitmo all the way up to 11.
If increasing the number of inmates indicates some commensurate level of national security cred why stop at doubling? I think he missed a chance to really bluster and should have demanded a ten or twenty fold increase. Hell, let's annex the Azores and load it up too. Half-stepping fucking amatuer xenophobe doesn't know mass incarceration near as well as your typical idiot blog commenter. Where's Pol Pot when you need him,???!!!
I thought he was clear. He does not believe in trial by jury, or the presumption of innocence, or the right to counsel, or an independent judiciary, or the right to liberty. He believes that the government should be disappear people from their homes and send them to prison camps where brutal guards will beat them up at their leisure. He thinks we need more Gitmos and bigger Gitmos. He wants to recreate the gulag. You saw how excited the audience was. They understood it. Why don't you?
Mitt's got a fever and the only cure is more Gitmo!
"Double the border patrol. Sounds good, sounds tough. Why not triple it? Why not triple it, Senator?"
Like Stephen Colbert, he knows that what matters is how the gut reacts to him, not what head thinks.
If increasing the number of inmates indicates some commensurate level of national security cred why stop at doubling?
Hell, why stop there? Why not just put a big fence around the entire country and declare everyone outside of the fence to be "potential terrorists". If you find a "potential terrorist" inside the fence, just kick them to the other side. Make it illegal to do business with or talk to a "potential terrorist" and now everyone is safe and secure as long as they stay on the inside of the fence.
Suddenly the whole world can be one big Gitmo and we can all be safe with our "freedom" that they hate us for...
What about Guiliani's gaffe that he had never heard of the theory that the 9/11 attackers attacked us because we had troops in Saudi Arabia? That was the explicit reason given in Al Quada recruiting videos.
Did any of the debaters advocate bringing back the draft? A warlike country like yours should really have a draft.
Did any of the debaters advocate bringing back the draft? A warlike country like yours should really have a draft.
Hahahahahaha....
No wait, you're serious. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Please. Republicans don't do sacrifice. That's what "the little people" are for.
Because the biggest problem with Gitmo, of course, is that it isn't big enough. Our military keeps capturing scary terrorists but doesn't have any place to lock them up, so they have to let them go.
I gotta gitmo satisfaction.
What about Guiliani's gaffe that he had never heard of the theory that the 9/11 attackers attacked us because we had troops in Saudi Arabia? That was the explicit reason given in Al Quada recruiting videos
no DR you are wrong Guiliani said he never heard of the theory that we were attacked on 911 because of our bombing of Iraq, no the soilders in Saudi Arabia, also i think people with common sense understood the point Romney was trying to make. He's going to do everything he can to defend the US from terrorism
A warlike country like yours should really have a draft.
Nah. We have mercenaries--ever hear of Blackwater? Of course our Mayberry Machiavellis apparently never did get to the part where Nick discusses condottiere and how dangerous they are...
Romney strikes me as an otherwise clueless person who knows enough to say what people want to hear...even when it makes no sense.
Note the loud applause following Romney's "double Gitmo" remark. These people aren't big fans of coherent analysis; rather, 100% animus.
As a resident of North Carolina, I wish you people would quit insulting the good people of our fictional small town of Mayberry by comparing them to these cretins.
Sheriff Taylor left Otis the key to let himself out of jail in the morning. He most certainly did not waterboard him.
"Double Gitmo." You know, like when kids say to each other "I Double Dare you!"
"Sheriff Taylor left Otis the key to let himself out of jail in the morning. He most certainly did not waterboard him."
Yes, but he did put water in the water barrel which greatly upset Otis (who had earlier spiked the barrel).
Seems the same to me.
Triple Dog Gitmo!!!!
As a resident of North Carolina, I wish you people would quit insulting the good people of our fictional small town of Mayberry by comparing them to these cretins.
It ain't so fictional! I've been through Mt. Airy, and even 20 years ago it was ridiculously overcommercialized with Mayberry this and Mayberry that. I shudder to think what it's like now.
The three leading Repubs, excluding that Ron Paul did come in second in the unscientific texting poll, all seem like BushBoy on steroids. Mitt does in seeminly well-spoken English, Rudy does it with boas and glitter, and McCain soldiers on.
Double Plus Little Boots is not a good thing.
They are all very, very very scary. Ron Paul speaks truth and they cannot stop stampeding to diss his patriotism. They would have tarred and feathered the Founding Fathers as wimps, too.
Help! This sure ain't my parents' Republican Party--but, then, beginning with Reagan, my dear departed sainted mother voted for Carter and Dems from then on. Lifelong Republican prior to that.
"Gitmo times infinity!"
"Gitmo times infinity plus one!"
What was up with Mitt Romney proposing to double Gitmo?"
Matthew, I shocked you could still be confused about that!
The Weekly Standard had a perfect article about this 5 months ago: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/119yfosc.asp
The Republican party has become a fascist movement in the U.S. And NO, I'm not exaggerating for effect. They really don't believe in democracy anymore.
The Peace Party vs. the Power Party The real divide in American politics. by Matthew ContinettiTogether, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the March 20, 2003, invasion of Iraq seem to have accelerated a shift begun some 30 years ago: The Democratic party is increasingly linked with the attitudes, tendencies, and policies of peace, whereas the Republican party is increasingly linked with the maintenance and projection of American military power.
Romney is playing to the authoritarian lovin' crowd. They want someone who will kill Arabs and "keep us safe." It's the same rush that the Roman mob used to get from seeing parades of prisoners from foreign conquests in chains on their way to being sacrificed in the Amphitheatre.
If Romney really wanted to top all of his rivals, he'd propose a revival of the gladiatorial games, with Marines dueling to the death with captured "terrorists" for our televised amusement!
Cugel, I object to your comparison of the neo-cons with ancient Rome. In ancient Rome, the leaders would have managed to capture bin Laden and paraded him through Rome in chains.
"The Democratic party is increasingly linked with the attitudes, tendencies, and policies of peace, whereas the Republican party is increasingly linked with the maintenance and projection of American military power."
I think this gives the Republicans too much credit. They do not project power. They dissipate power. They waste power. They are the party of violence, not power.
Personally, I won't be satisfied until the USA declares a Global War on Everything Bad (GWEB) and devotes the entire national budget to GWEB. Under GWEB, it won't even make sense to talk about double or triple Gitmo. Under GWEB, you don't get sent to Gitmo, Gitmo get sent to you.
Romney strikes me as a wussy French-like cheese-eating surrender monkey with his proposal to merely "double Gitmo."
I disagree - they're all wusses for taking prisoners in the first place.
Yet again, the tendency of Americans to elect fuckwitted state or local executives is proved to cause problems.
But yeah, this was a Colbertesque appeal to the gut. 'Double Gitmo' sounds good to the lizard-brains of the base.
Al,
Our troops were in Saudi Arabia so we could bomb Iraq.
Thank God we have an independent judiciary to uphold the Constitution in case another of these Falangist Republicans gets into offi ... Oh. Never mind.
Lots of cleverness here today, but let's not let that obscure a fundamental difference between Dem and GOP candidates on homeland security.
Most GOP candidates back aggressive interrogation and surveillance of terror suspects; Dems -- not so much.
Fred,
Go look in the mirror. Now repeat after me: I am a liar.
The difference between the Dem and GOP candidates is that the Dems are loyal to the principles of the constitution and the founding fathers and are confident enough in America to have the great system of American justice investigate and try our ennemies in a court of law. America is a nation of Law.
The Republicans pee on the constitution and make bad men disappear from sight rather than present the facts and make a case. The GOP approach is discrediting and weakening America.
Here is what I don't get. If Spain and England and France and Canada can have successful court cases against terrorists and terrorist suspects, why can't America? Why the lack of faith in your own country?
"Aggressive interrogation and surveillance"
Wow, Fred, what nice euphemisms for "torture and spying on whomever the government wants to spy on." Didn't they start keeping tabs on the Quakers in the past couple years, if I remember correctly?
Fred,
Looks like your mommy raised
a dishonest son.
She messed up.
At least Rudy Giuliani was forthright enough to come out and say he supports waterboarding, as opposed to all this bullshit about "aggressive interrogation practices."
If you want to say that a major dividing line between Democrats and Republicans is that Republicans are fine with waterboarding terrorist suspects, then fine, I'm happy to debate you sickos on those terms.
But of course, the very reason most politicians avoid calling a spade a spade is that they know a great many people, including many Republicans, would recoil in horror if they ever got into specifics. So instead it becomes a game of sound bites to see who can sound "tough on terror" without actually advocating anything specific.
But now Rudy, the Republican frontrunner, has thrown down the gauntlet. Fine, let's talk about waterboarding. I look forward to hearing where everyone stands.
GWEB.... God, I love it.
The real problem as I see it is that the stupid primary system we have almost forces the candidates for the Republican nomination for prez to act like cretins just so they can get support of the hyper-cretonic voters who actively participate in primaries. McCain, Romney and all the frontrunners know that if they can't win the primary in South Carolina, it's almost over already.
So Fred, if the captors of the U.S. troops in Iraq tonight post a video of them being waterboarded, you would not have a problem with that. Correct?
"So Fred, if the captors of the U.S. troops in Iraq tonight post a video of them being waterboarded, you would not have a problem with that. Correct?"
What fantasy world are you living in? If all the "captors" of our troops do to them is waterboard them, I would be relieved -- as would the troops, their families, and everyone else who lives in the world called reality.
You can erect all the straw men you like about how Democrats are loyal to the Constitution while Republicans just want to tear it up, but when you get down to actual policies designed to prevent future terrorist attacks here -- e.g., data mining and surveillance of calls made to known terrorists overseas, aggressive interrogation of terrorists like KSM, the Patriot Act, etc. -- most Republicans have been consistent advocates while many Democrats have tried to gut these policies (even some policies, like the Patriot Act, that they voted for initially almost unanimously).
If you want to advocate that every captured terrorist get a criminal trial in the U.S. with Lynne Stewart-style leftist/facilitators as a defense attorney, knock yourself out.
Fred, like the rest of his party, doesn't seem to realize that when they ran the 2006 election on these talking points it was a disaster. Democrats don't want to eavesdrop on the terrorists! Keep running with that one.
I remember Conrad Burns had this great ad skewering Jon Tester for saying during a debate that he wanted to repeal the Patriot Act. "I want to repeal it," over and over, said the ad. How'd that election turn out, anyway?
Steve:
"How'd that election turn out, anyway?"
Did I forget to congratulate you for your party winning the Midterms in '06 after losing the presidency to a weak GOP candidate twice, and losing the previous three Congressional elections? Sorry. Congratulations. Nice job.
And yes, you're right: the Dems '06 election victory demonstrates that you can now safely abandon your pretense of agreeing in principle with policies like the Patriot Act.
And yes, you're right: the Dems '06 election victory demonstrates that you can now safely abandon your pretense of agreeing in principle with policies like the Patriot Act.
What pretense? Tester proclaimed quite openly, as I said, that he wanted to repeal the Patriot Act. And despite Burns' apparent belief that he could hang that position around Tester's neck like a millstone, the electorate tossed him out of office in favor of the new guy. But hey, keep running on how awesome and patriotic the Patriot Act is.
And voters, likewise, were completely unmoved by the national GOP ad campaign spreading the out-and-out lie that Democrats oppose surveillance of terrorists. But hey, I'm sure the election was a complete one-off. Please, please, keep running on the same themes as 2006, I beg of you. I seriously can't believe my good fortune.
"If you want to advocate that every captured terrorist get a criminal trial in the U.S. with Lynne Stewart-style leftist/facilitators as a defense attorney."
I quake in my boots at the mere mention of Lynne Stewart and her Secret League of Leftist/Facilitators. By using her Liberal Hypno-Ray and her Legalistic Technicality Papers, she can force juries to set accused terrorists (who are all surely guilty) free. Oh, the injustice!
(Conf. to Cugel--Nice to see you here. What have you been up to since moving to Pergolo?)
James Gary:
"By using her Liberal Hypno-Ray and her Legalistic Technicality Papers, she can force juries to set accused terrorists (who are all surely guilty) free. Oh, the injustice!"
Why parade your ignorance? Do a quick Google search so you can join the rest of the class in understanding what I was referring to when I called Lynne Stewart a "facilitator".
Sorry, I'm new here.
Fred can't possibly be for real, right? Nobody not currently in this Administration could actually be that stupid. Right?
Democrats do not oppose wiretapping telephone calls to known terrorists overseas Fred that is a load of nonsense and you know it.
The FISA courts only have to approve the warrants for the government to do so and the wiretaps can be up and running for 72 hours before that happens. Is there a Democrat out there trying to close that 72 hour window and make it harder to get FISA warrants? Is there a Democrat trying to shut the practice down entirely? What? No. Then be quiet now and go have a snack.
ellenbrenna,
Do Dems approve the data mining to figure out whose phones to tap in the first place?
"Do Dems approve the data mining to figure out whose phones to tap in the first place?"
Fred, for the hundred-thousandth time, the issue is not whether the Feds should be allowed to tap people's phones, but whether they should be allowed do it *without a warrant* or *without any kind of Congressional or judicial oversight.*
The argument that "data mining" should be exempt from oversight (because, allegedly, the large numbers of potential surveill-ees makes it too difficult to obtain warrants in the traditional way) is of a piece with your earlier "Lynne Stewart" implication that some crimes are too serious to allow the defendant legal representation. "Congressional oversight" and "the right of the accused to an attorney" are basic American principles, and to contend that they simply don't apply anymore is just ridiculous.
In fairness to Fred the Lynne Stewart argument isn't that people don't deserve legal representation his argument may be that they do not deserve legal representation that will aid and abet terrorism by passing notes to possible conspirators.
No one has sufficiently explained data mining and why it is vital to our national security beyond saying it is vital to our national security. Why mine? Justify on a practical level giving the government free reign over electronic information in our country. Better yet justify giving the Obama administration or the second Clinton administration free reign over electronic information in this country without any Congressional oversight.
.....
Bureau of Prisons regulations give wardens the right to reject correspondence by an inmate for "the protection of the public, or if it might facilitate criminal activity." That includes material "which may lead to the use of physical violence."
The Bureau of Prisons failed to respond to repeated inquiries from The Associated Press about whether Rudolph's writings violate prison rules.
But U.S. Attorney Alice Martin, who helped prosecute Rudolph for the Alabama bombing, said there is nothing the prison can do to restrict Rudolph or the supporter who keeps posting his writings, anti-abortion activist Donald Spitz of Chesapeake, Va.
"An inmate does not lose his freedom of speech," she said.
">Some of these things are not like the others..
Fred can piss-and-moan all it likes about why it lost its "war" and what further shredding it would do to the constitution if it could, and on-and-blah, but the bottom line is: it's over. The Bush era, thankfully, is at an end.
.
ellenbrenna:
"In fairness to Fred the Lynne Stewart argument isn't that people don't deserve legal representation his argument may be that they do not deserve legal representation that will aid and abet terrorism by passing notes to possible conspirators."
Nice to see someone has been paying attention.
"Why mine?"
That's the whole key to the program: so the federal government knows which lines it needs to ask for warrants to tap. I think there should be Congressional oversight of the program (and there has been), and the government shouldn't be given free reign to do this with all electronic communications. But international calls to terror suspects in hot spots like Pakistan? I think that's a good idea.
Why not just put a big fence around the entire country and declare everyone outside of the fence to be "potential terrorists".
Just potential terrorists? What kind of pussy are you?
Lest there be any confusion, Frederick emphatically is not the same person as Fred.
Fred, there's a name for the sort of country you want to live in, and that name is "police state".
And yes, that makes you a mainstream Republican, as the audience at the debate made clear.
you guys pay far too much attention to fred. ignore him and he will go away. it worked for his family.
"Fred, there's a name for the sort of country you want to live in, and that name is "police state"."
That's a little hyperbolic of you, no? Taking the calls going from the U.S. to, say, Waziristan, and data mining for key words in a few likely languages -- in a program subject to Congressional oversight -- doesn't presage an Orwellian police state. To say it does is simply to replace intelligent discussion with scare tactics.
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While I think that what you have to say does add new dimensions to our discussion, gay video clips, I find your arguments unpersuasive.
Comments closed May 30, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Now Matt,
1) He's Republican &
2) He was saying something that sounds pro-war, irrational, and violent. Therefore, he was manly and unassailable.
Posted by MDtoMN | May 16, 2007 10:21 AM