No, I think the point is you don't seek out diverse opinions..sm

• Evacuees attacked - Lurker
  • Taken COMPLETELY out of context - typical
    • This post was not an attack against Bush...sm - Democrat
      • bashing bush - reader
        • Corporation owned media does not bash Bush, they bash those that bash Bush.sm - LVMT
          • Presenting differing viewpoints is not bashing - clarification
            • Mainstream media are Bush apologists, hardly balanced.sm - LVMT
              • The so called liberal media is not so liberal anymore...sm - Democrat
                • Maybe Fox News is #1 for a reason - Hattie
                  • Words of this century...sm - Democrat
                    • Big example - Hattie
                      • I find most politicians on these shows - Lurker
                    • I love those phrases ... - Lurker
                  • Fox Balance - reader
              • You must get your news off a different satellite than me - ???
                • No, I watch the same thing, only I seek out diverse opinions.sm - LVMT
                  • How would I know? - Hattie
                    • No, I think the point is you don't seek out diverse opinions..sm - Democrat
                      • How do you know how I seek my opinions? - Hattie
                        • Without open-mindedness, there will never be change sm - LVMT
                          • I am open minded - Hattie
                            • Me either. I do my own research and draw my own conclusions.sm - LVMT
                              • Individual independent investigation - Hattie
                      • Well, honestly Democrat, the times that has been tried here. sm - MT
  • Same sentiment and type of comments are noted on - the "other board." nm
  • Notice - Democrat

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WASHINGTON - Lawyer Patrick Murphy and five other veterans of the Given their experience in Iraq, the six Democrats in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia say they are eminently qualified to pose the tough questions. Their reservations mirror public opinion, with an increasing number of Americans expressing concern about the mission and favoring a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The most recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll showed only 37 percent of Americans approve of Bush's handling of Iraq, with 62 percent disapproving.

This summer, Democrat Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran, nearly defeated Republican Jean Schmidt in a special election in an Ohio district considered a GOP stronghold. Hackett focused on his wartime experience and his opposition to Bush's policies.

On Monday, with support from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other party leaders, Hackett decided to seek a higher office, the Senate seat now held by two-term Republican Mike DeWine, said spokesman David Woodruff.

Some guys don't think it's time to question our government, but the fact is I love my country, said Murphy, 31, who fought with the 82nd Airborne Division. We need to have an exit strategy now.

While fighting in Iraq, a private asked then-Capt. Murphy why U.S. forces were in the Persian Gulf nation and was told it didn't matter; there was a job to do and just try to return home safely.

That wasn't the time to question our government, Murphy recalled.

Murphy is challenging first-term Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, a Republican in the northern Philadelphia suburbs of the 8th District.

Another Iraq war veteran, Texas Republican Van Taylor, is also running for a House seat, but he backs President Bush.

In 1974, public outrage over the Watergate scandal and Republican President Richard M. Nixon's administration swept a class of reform-minded Democrats into office. It's too soon to measure the impact of the war on the 2006 elections, but the handful of veterans pursuing seats in the House is an early indicator.

The Democratic veterans walk a fine line as they reach out to voters who may question Bush's handling of the conflict. The task is to challenge the administration while still being seen as patriotic.

David Ashe, who spent most of 2003 working as a Marine judge advocate general in Iraq, chooses his words carefully when asked whether the United States should have invaded.

There's no reason to Monday morning quarterback the decision, said Ashe, 36, who is trying to unseat first-term Republican Rep. Thelma Drake in Virginia's 2nd District. I would say we're in the right position to succeed. Whether or not we're going to get that success remains to be seen.

Although they often talk tough about the Bush administration, some of the candidates don't fit the typical anti-war image, said Charles Sheehan-Miles, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense.

They really want to help the Iraqi people and see the mission through, and they think we're losing because of stupid mistakes made at the senior leadership level, Sheehan-Miles said.

Historically, war experience has added to a candidate's credibility. As many as 70 percent of lawmakers in the 1950s were war veterans, but only about 40 percent of the members of Congress today have military experience.

During the Vietnam War, there was such a collective funk that veterans felt free to criticize, said John Johannes, a political science professor at Villanova University. A few, like Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., got their political start as anti-war activists.

Veterans today have an advantage because Americans have a positive feeling about soldiers, said John Allen Williams, a political scientist at Loyola University in Chicago.

Unlike Vietnam, people who do not like the war are not blaming the veterans, Williams said.

But that will not guarantee success, contends Ed Patru, deputy communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. Democratic war veterans who are seen as liberal on other issues aren't going to be popular with voters, he said.

I think a lot of Democrats are looking at what happened in Ohio and trying to duplicate that around the country, Patru said.

Taylor, 33, a Republican businessman from West Texas, supports Bush's policies. He is a major in the Marines reserves, and, like the Democrats, cites his war experience.

The war on terror is going to be with us for a long time and Congress is going to grapple with the war on terror, Taylor said. We need policy-makers who know what it means to make war.

Bryan Lentz, 41, an attorney from Swarthmore, Pa., volunteered to go to Iraq at age 39 with a civil affairs unit. The Army reserves major was so disillusioned by the lack of a plan in Iraq that he decided while he was in Iraq to run for Congress.

He is trying to unseat 10-term GOP Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

I'm not anti-war, I'm anti-failure, Lentz said. We need to define what victory is and we need to set a plan to get there. You cannot stay the course if you do not set a course.

Friday, Nov. 10, 2006
Exclusive: Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse
A lawsuit in Germany will seek a criminal prosecution of the outgoing Defense Secretary and other U.S. officials for their alleged role in abuses at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo
By ADAM ZAGORIN

Just days after his resignation, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The plaintiffs in the case include 11 Iraqis who were prisoners at Abu Ghraib, as well as Mohammad al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at Guantanamo, whom the U.S. has identified as the so-called 20th hijacker and a would-be participant in the 9/11 hijackings. As TIME first reported in June 2005, Qahtani underwent a special interrogation plan, personally approved by Rumsfeld, which the U.S. says produced valuable intelligence. But to obtain it, according to the log of his interrogation and government reports, Qahtani was subjected to forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, prolonged stress positions, sleep deprivation and other controversial interrogation techniques.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that one of the witnesses who will testify on their behalf is former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the one-time commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq. Karpinski — who the lawyers say will be in Germany next week to publicly address her accusations in the case — has issued a written statement to accompany the legal filing, which says, in part: It was clear the knowledge and responsibility [for what happened at Abu Ghraib] goes all the way to the top of the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld .

A spokesperson for the Pentagon told TIME there would be no comment since the case has not yet been filed.

Along with Rumsfeld, Gonzales and Tenet, the other defendants in the case are Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; former deputy assisant attorney general John Yoo; General Counsel for the Department of Defense William James Haynes II; and David S. Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Senior military officers named in the filing are General Ricardo Sanchez, the former top Army official in Iraq; Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of Guantanamo; senior Iraq commander, Major General Walter Wojdakowski; and Col. Thomas Pappas, the one-time head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib.

Germany was chosen for the court filing because German law provides universal jurisdiction allowing for the prosecution of war crimes and related offenses that take place anywhere in the world. Indeed, a similar, but narrower, legal action was brought in Germany in 2004, which also sought the prosecution of Rumsfeld. The case provoked an angry response from Pentagon, and Rumsfeld himself was reportedly upset. Rumsfeld's spokesman at the time, Lawrence DiRita, called the case a a big, big problem. U.S. officials made clear the case could adversely impact U.S.-Germany relations, and Rumsfeld indicated he would not attend a major security conference in Munich, where he was scheduled to be the keynote speaker, unless Germany disposed of the case. The day before the conference, a German prosecutor announced he would not pursue the matter, saying there was no indication that U.S. authorities and courts would not deal with allegations in the complaint.

In bringing the new case, however, the plaintiffs argue that circumstances have changed in two important ways. Rumsfeld's resignation, they say, means that the former Defense Secretary will lose the legal immunity usually accorded high government officials. Moreover, the plaintiffs argue that the German prosecutor's reasoning for rejecting the previous case — that U.S. authorities were dealing with the issue — has been proven wrong.

The utter and complete failure of U.S. authorities to take any action to investigate high-level involvement in the torture program could not be clearer, says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a U.S.-based non-profit helping to bring the legal action in Germany. He also notes that the Military Commissions Act, a law passed by Congress earlier this year, effectively blocks prosecution in the U.S. of those involved in detention and interrogation abuses of foreigners held abroad in American custody going to back to Sept. 11, 2001. As a result, Ratner contends, the legal arguments underlying the German prosecutor's previous inaction no longer hold up.

Whatever the legal merits of the case, it is the latest example of efforts in Western Europe by critics of U.S. tactics in the war on terror to call those involved to account in court. In Germany, investigations are under way in parliament concerning cooperation between the CIA and German intelligence on rendition — the kidnapping of suspected terrorists and their removal to third countries for interrogation. Other legal inquiries involving rendition are under way in both Italy and Spain.

U.S. officials have long feared that legal proceedings against war criminals could be used to settle political scores. In 1998, for example, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet — whose military coup was supported by the Nixon administration — was arrested in the U.K. and held for 16 months in an extradition battle led by a Spanish magistrate seeking to charge him with war crimes. He was ultimately released and returned to Chile. More recently, a Belgian court tried to bring charges against then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for alleged crimes against Palestinians.

For its part, the Bush Administration has rejected adherence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on grounds that it could be used to unjustly prosecute U.S. officials. The ICC is the first permanent tribunal established to prosecute war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/12/08/Gitmo_911_suspects_to_plead_guilty/UPI-68631228752620/

I keep hearing about HC wanting to push on getting Florida and Michigan votes to count, delegates to be seated, etc.  While I understand about every vote should count and they should, I also understand that Fla & Mich agreed on this so that they could vote early (i.e. they broke the rules and were punished) and both sides (Obama & Clinton) agreed to it.  I guess at that time she thought that the whole US was just going to vote for her and nobody would vote for Obama and now that she is seeing otherwise she wants to change the rules/laws.

Now I don't even understand why there is a meeting going on.  Doesn't anyone just tell them...No!  You agreed to this.  You were told of the consequences and you agreed and now that your losing you want to change the laws to be put in your favor.  Every time they don't win they want to change the rules, and I dont understand why they are not just being told "No".  If they are so concerned about all the votes counting why didn't they just wait until when they were supposed to vote and not push it earlier.  I can tell you - because they thought they would be winning more states and they didn't care enough about Fla or Mich to wait.

Now I understand that she is going to go to the meeting and push that even with FL and MI she doesn't have enough votes, but she's now going to push for them to just dismiss Obama (even though he has more delagates and votes, and states won), that they should just dump him and make her the nominee because she believes she can win over McCain. She really needs to wake up.  She's just like her husband - a legend in their own minds.  If she steals this from Obama and becomes the nominee (which I doubt very very much) but if she was to be able to finagle that so much dirt would come out going all the way back to Whitewater, Rose Law Firm, etc, etc,

Maybe what they should be doing is taking responsibility and telling the citizens of FL & MI the real reason why their votes are not being counted - because of her and her decisions she made and if they blame anyone they should blame her for not following the laws.

And on another side cannot anyone tell me why in the world Obama's name was not on the ticket in MI.  I have not for the life of me figured out that one.  Only her name was on the ticket?  Helloooo....the last time I looked there were two candidates.  Now they are trying to say Obama removed his name from the ticket.  Yeah, right, tell me another one.  I hear that and I think, what country do we live in where the person who wants to be president has only their name on the ballot.  That's what I hear happens in Cuba, Russia and all those other communist countries.

When wil the insanity end?

Your point is??  Bush is the one who waged this immoral illegal wrong war, not all the democrats you have posted quotes on.  It is BUSH, the chimp boy, who waged the war and used every kind of excuse possible, flip flopping back and forth over the reasons.  Now that we know there are no WMD and we have gotten Saddam, what is the excuse for being there and not setting a time plan to leave??  Of course the reason has always been the murderous foreign policy of the US, to have its bloody hands in every country it possibly can.  They are just salivating in DC over the fact that we will have control over the Middle East and OIL.  Bush and his group are war criminals, just as bad as Saddam.

 While there were quite a few issues in this article that were noteworthy, to me at least, the main point was that the Bush/war supporters are going to have a chance to participate in the war that they love. Since we broke Iraq we have to fix it and we can't afford to and the military can't do it so, in its infinite wisdom, the administration has come up with a "Peace Corps" type scenario where professionals of all vein VOLUNTEER to go to Iraq and work, for free. This is just too good. How many of those on the conservative board do you think will volunteer to go, or their husbands, sons, relatives? And like he said, if you voted for Bush put your money where your magnet is, smack dab in the middle of the Sunni triangle.

We have and have had for a long time alternatives energy resources. You can destroy the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska and wherever else you want but in a few years we will be right back here. The oil supply is finite. Get used to it. Time to switch gears and explore the alternatives. But again, I can't wait to see who signs up for volunteer duty...next stop is Vietnam (Oh, I mean Iran, no I mean Iraq...).

They are even making Pat Buchanan look like a liberal.  I have never agreed with Buchanan until recently.  This is an excellent example of what I'm talking about.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/VIDEO__Matthews_Buchanan_Slam_Neocons_0720.html