Hunh. Democrats now calling for Karl Rove to apologize or resign

Those Tories are everywhere!

On Wednesday, Rove also denounced Sen. Dick Durbin's comments comparing interrogation at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to the methods of Nazis and other repressive regimes. He said the statements have been broadcast throughout the Middle East, putting U.S. troops in greater danger. The Illinois Democrat has since apologized for the remarks.

"No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals," Rove said.

so predictable.

it still stings to think that our elected government and therefore i suspect the majority of americans approve of torture. to question it is un-american? it makes me so mad. dude, i swear... it's a good thing i'm a internet kookjob and not some senate floor worker person... if frist had called for an apology i think i probably would have had to go punch him in the face.

i can't put my finger on why this particular offense pisses me off so bad.

is it not blindly obvious that accepting torture puts us in the bad guys category? we don't win by cheating. maybe we WIN... but not really.

i mean, i'm a pacifist wuss milk and toast type. is this the piece of straw breakin my back?
m.

DEMOCRATS BE PUSSIES

http://sportserver.nandomedia.com/ips_rich_content/917-tyson.jpg http://www.worldwide-web.com/JeffreyBabad/Simpsons/Images/gil.gif

for the party that consistently pooh-poohed the "hornets nest" stuff, this is pretty weak shit. especially in light of a few piss-soaked korans. (i mean that was newsweek's fault and everything but still)

you shouldn't have had your dick in the mayo man.
m.

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2005/06/torture_making_.html

..."Wanting it clear" means wanting an honest, open debate about what we want interrogators to do in our name. In the course of that debate, those who favor torture would have a chance to make their case. Is it useful in interrogations? Do ticking time bomb scenarios actually occur, and if so, how often? How much actionable intelligence have our "stress positions" and our "Fear Up Harsh" and "Pride and Ego Down" tactics actually yielded? Those who oppose torture would have a chance to ask: do these benefits, if they exist, outweigh the dangers of adopting a policy that seems to invite abuse? Do they create more terrorists than they allow us to capture or thwart? Have they made enemies of people who might have supported us? And are these methods consistent with our values as a nation, and with our noblest aspirations? When both sides had made their case, we could then decide openly what we want to do, and decide it as a nation.

"Wanting it blurry" means wanting to avoid that debate. It means caring less about considering the extremely serious issues at stake and getting them right than about being able to duck the uncomfortable knowledge that debating those issues might force on us. It means caring less about our country, its ideals, and its honor than about our own peace of mind, even when we have reason to think that that peace of mind might be undeserved. It means being willing to let taxi drivers whom we know to be innocent be beaten to death, detainees be sodomized with chemical lightsticks and have lit cigarettes stuck in their ears, and fourteen year olds be "suspended from hooks in the ceiling for hours at a time" while being beaten, in order to preserve the illusion that our own hands are clean.

Wanting it clear is for adults. Wanting it blurry is for children, who hope that problems they don't attend to will go away. And it is unworthy of citizens of a great democracy...

...Hold your ground. Always be on the offense. Never go on defense. Never whine or complain. Never act like a victim. Never plead. Avoid the language of weakness, for example, rising intonations on statements. Your voice should be steady. Your body and voice should show optimism. You should convey passionate conviction without losing control.

-Conservatives have parodied liberals as weak, angry (hence not in control of their emotions), weak-minded, softhearted, unpatriotic, uninformed, and elitist. Don’t give them any opportunities to stereotype you in any of these ways. Expect these stereotypes, and deal with them when they come up.

-By the way you conduct yourself, show strength, calmness, and control; an ability to reason; a sense of realism; love of country; a command of the basic facts; and a sense of being an equal, not a superior. At the very least you want your audience to think of you with respect, as someone they may disagree with but who they have to take seriously. In many situations this is the best you can hope for. You have to recognize those situations and realize that a draw with dignity is a victory in the game of being taken seriously...

beats me. I think that's the problem. no one IS doing this, and it doesn't help when you get guys trying to show strength by just copping the rightwing talking points; either by decrying dick durbin or like joe Lieberman and talking about "tax relief."

I misread this the first time, thinking to myself, "Good grief, what did Kim Jong-il do now?"

Senator Byrd...? Sad to say, not Dean (he's more of an attack dog - tho I do like him quite a bit). The response to Rove's latest "Democrats Be Pussies" riposte would be to aggressively characterize the Republicans' response - the invasion of Iraq - as basically not only stupid, but especially COWARDLY. Rather than face the real test of strength and capture Bin Laden, a task requiring an unprecedented level of coordination, diplomacy, and assiduous application of force, they opted for the more conventional (read: pre-9/11 thinking), "easier" route of invading the nation of a weakened enemy. Invading Iraq can easily be cast as stemming from pre-9-11 politics - it is not a decision really in line with the "9-11 changed everything!" position. It reflects the old thinking of engaging a conventional enemy in conventional warfare. On top of that, you could easily argue that DubyaCo. et al are a bunch of pussies for preferring to take out someone (Sadaam) they knew they could capture relatively easily instead of facing the more arduous and complicated task of ACTUALLY CATCHING THE TERRORISTS RESPONSIBLE for killing US citizens.

counter w/

"Conservatives saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and, instead of going after the attackers, shied away from the tough decisions. Instead of preparing for war, they cowered from the task of capturing Bin Laden and preferred to bully an old, weakened, unworthy opponent."

again, the reactionary fuckheads NEED culture war. they need rancor and shouting and he-said/she-said unverifiable coverage. yelling on talk shows and attacking someone's framing head-on does not destroy it, it only reinforces it. Especially when the reactionary type continually frames himself as persecuted and the victim of unjust attacks. "Y'see, that's all liberals are good for; personal attacks" & whatever.

PLEASE FUCKING SAY THIS SOMEBODY, ANYBODY

x-post

Boxer, Pelosi, Conyers - they're all major players now, I think.

I'm beginning to dislike my own country's mindset to an unhealthy degree.

Hahaha try growing up black in this country!

"Black Like Me"

xpost

Except he did go after Al-Qaida and their hosts, the Taliban in Afghanistan. Given the fact that the Pakistani ISI has always supported the Taliban and probably still are to some extent, Musharraf's illegitimacy and the brutal, not mention clumsy way that Bush announced, "You're either with us or with them" (which was directed specifically at the upper echelons of the Pakistani military, it can be argued that initially they weren't doing half bad. Even in the way they facilitated the Kharzai-Pashtun/Northern Alliance political settlement. I think they worried that pushing Pakistan too hard could lead to political chaos and a more Islamist military coup there and I think they figured that after years of meddling with it, Afghanistan wasn't worth saving really. I think your analysis has too much pop-psychology to it and not enough cynicism. These guys know that there's no money in caring about Afghanistan unless you can bring the natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad-Donmez gas basin via Afghanistan to Pakistan. Unocal has probably given up on that for a while now.

I also believe people of various political stripes realized over the course of the 90's that something was going to have to be done about Saddam's Iraq after years of sanctions had produced nothing more than suffering for the people, embarassment and reduced authority for the U.N., and oil-for-money corruption in Iraq and abroad. BushCo figured that while America was all pissed off, it would be a good time to get us to war and stop dithering around with Saddam. Unfortunately, his administration is one of the most corrupt, inept, unforthcoming, and inarticulate in recent history. They lied to get us in, changed rationale for the war midway, and apparently planned on getting out via flower choked victory parades. Their continued privatization of various support jobs has pissed alot of the military off, cost a fortune, and made only their best clients happy. I'd be surprised if most of them could organize a piss-up in a beer tent.

M. White depressingly OTM

ha ha, man I don't get the "you aren't cynical enough" charge too often, I must say. (It's rather enjoyable to hear it...) in my defense all I can say is my posts are an attempt to dream up a readable script for Democrats to use, think up rhetoric to counter Rove, not necessarily to cover the myriad nuances and shades of grey that definitely do exist. My posts are just my (rather inexperienced) attempt at workable leftist soundbites.

as far as I'm concerned, nobody who voted for the invasion of Iraq(Democrat or Republican) has any integrity whatsoever.

Unfortunately BushCo as poisoned the well. Call for a timetable, and Rummy's right, the insurgents will have a field day 'cause you've told them that part of their agenda has succeded. Call for us to pull out regardless of what's going on and when Iraq disintigrates or turns into a long smouldering civil war, or gets re-united firmly under the grip of a NuGeneration strongman and you'll be accused of cowardice or myopic self-regard. "Who lost China?" Stick with it, while sniping all the time like Biden, and you'll look like a whiny, self-serving politician increasingly out of touch not only with your party's base but with the national mood, generally.

as far as I'm concerned, nobody who voted for the invasion of Iraq(Democrat or Republican) has any integrity whatsoever. This is not calculated to attract to the party large numbers of people who did support the administration in the beginning but are increasingly ready to part company. Dems must look forward not backward. They need to propose some simple, concrete changes to the way the Repubs are running the country.

...Because if the Democrats had been in power, they would have "wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." This seems unduly harsh; everyone knows that Democrats would have wanted to pull out the attackers' feeding tubes and cloned their babies...

also, Scott Mclellan tries to cover for Rove by using the phrase "different philosophies" at least 15 times when asnwering a question about it.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), who joined Pryce at the press conference, told Cybercast News Service that it "is just inconceivable and truly incorrigible that in the midst of the war, that the Democratic leaders would be conducting guerrilla warfare on American troops..."

and yet no one will call for his apology, either.

We have strong, very VERY deep roots to draw on here people - from Roger Williams to MLK, there is a clear line of leftist, humanist tradition in the United States.

Too fuckin' right. And American liberals need to say that more, over and over, reconnect with those traditions, remind people that the United States was not invented by talk-radio hosts and Dr. James fucking Dobson, talk about our history, who we are and what we've done and how there have always been people in this country willing to use fear, hysteria and bigotry (religious and otherwise) in pursuit of money and power. Drag all those skeletons out of the closet. Teach some fucking history. Take the offensive.

And quit asking for apologies. And quit giving them.

perhaps it's the latest, irrefutable proof of US Gitmo torture. Who knows--knowing shit is something that happens in a democracy, not the Fourth World cesspool Rove gets tiny wood dreaming about.

Rumsfeld: US not losing Iraq war

--Donald Rumsfeld tells Congress the US is not losing the Iraq war, and refuses to set a timetable to pull out.
--Baghdad reels from bombings
--Iraq violence shifting Arab media
--Iraq rebuilding fails to deliver

Democrat: "Okay, okay, jeepers! I'm really sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

Republican: "Cry for me."

Democrat: (weeps) "Okay! I'm sorry! Now you go, you apologize too."

Republican. "Haha, no. Traitor."

that's how it's gonna appear!

for Reid to call on Rove to apologize theoretically might be weak. but that's not what he did. he called on him to resign. in the alternative, he could weasel his way out with an apology.

White House Stands Behind Rove Comments

By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 55 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A White House official said Friday the administration finds it "somewhat puzzling" that Democrats are demanding presidential adviser Karl Rove's apology or resignation for implying that liberals are soft on terrorism.

"I think Karl was very specific, very accurate, in who he was pointing out," communications director Dan Bartlett said. "It's touched a chord with these Democrats. I'm not sure why."

Congressional Republicans earlier joined the White House in standing solidly behind Rove, saying he shouldn't apologize and that he was outlining a philosophical divide between a president who sought to win the war on terrorism by taking the fight to the enemy and Democrats who questioned that approach.

[...]

Bartlett, appearing on morning news shows Friday, said that Rove was referring in his talk to Moveon.org, a liberal group that has been identified with movie producer Michael Moore.

"It's somewhat puzzling why all these Democrats ... who responded forcefully after 9-11, who voted to support President Bush's pursuit of the war on terror, are now rallying to the defense of Moveon.org, this liberal organization who put out a petition in the days after 9-11 and said that we ought not use military force in responding to 9-11," Bartlett said on NBC's "Today" show. "That is who Karl Rove cited in that speech ... There is no need to apologize."

Appearing on CBS's "The Early Show," Bartlett said that Rove was "just pointing out that MoveOn.org is a liberal organization that didn't defend or accept the way that we prosecuted the war in the days after" the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington.

Bartlett told interviewers that he didn't understand why Democrats "are throwing up such a huff..."

also, from Talkingpointsmemo's post quoted here:

http://www.cjrdaily.org/archives/001620.asp

...Read this piece in today's Times, absorb it, give yourself 90 seconds for outrage, then rededicate yourself to wresting a great country from his hands.

Don't forget that these statements are meant to outrage you. You're a targeted audience. They're meant to perpetuate a state of maximal polarization in this country -- the state of affairs most suited for vampires like Mr. Rove to suck the nation dry...

that is true, pretty much. the guy's like ann coulter; extant only to please their crowd and piss-off the other side...which pleases their crowd even more.