Loopy Leahy's Lame Lunacy
Patrick Leahy has completely lost his mind. Below is a portion of his floor debate today over the detainee bill. All emphasis is mine. This transcript is courtesy of Hugh Hewitt
"This is not just a bad bill. This is truly a dangerous bill..I have been asking Secretary Rumsfeld for the last several weeks whether our actions are eliminating more of our enemies than are being created. But now we understand. We are creating more enemies than we are eliminating. Our intelligence agencies agree the global jihadist movement is spreading and adapting, and is increasing in both numbers and geographic dispersions. We aren't making ourselves safer. We're putting us more at risk. Intelligence agencies go on to note the new jihadist networks and cells with anti-American agendas are increasingly likely to emerge and the operational threat will grow not only abroad but in the homeland. This is truly chilling.
Nicely paraphrased from the New York Times arguments. And it also shows that Senator Leahy has not read enough of the National Intelligence Estimate. While it acknowledges that right now there seems to be an uptick in "sectarian violence" in Iraq, more successes on our side of the coin will deter more radical Islamicists from joining the jihad. In the end, the NIE states that we must win, and right now we're doing all right with that, but there is room for improvement.
The Bush Cheney Adminstration not only failed to stop 9/11 from happening, but for five years failed to bring Osama bin Laden to justice even though they had him cornered at Tora Bora --they yanked our special forces out of there to send them into Iraq. We witnessed the growth of additional enemies.
Who is writing this man's words? MoveOn.org? Going back to blaming the president for September 11th is ludicrous. President Bush, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, shares the blame with the Clinton Administration. But for people like Senator Leahy, history apparently began in January of 2001, and every little thing the president has done has contributed to us being attacked. Someone get this guy a straight-jacket. But wait, there's more of this craziness.
When America can be seen abandoning its basic American Democratic values, its checks and balances and its great and wonderful legal tradition, and is seen as becoming more autocratic and less accountable, how's that going to help foster democratic reforms elsewhere? Do as I say and not as I do is a model that has never successfully inspired peoples around the world, and it doesn't inspire me.
Lord, save my sanity because his is completely gone. It flew the coop obviously before this debate started. We're abandoning our 'basic American Democratic values,' with just a little over a month to go before we engage in a general election. We're abandoning those values when we say that terrorists can't be granted raights reserved for American CITIZENS only. This man is making an argument to extend American rights to its most loathsome and threatening enemies trying to kill us. That is like trying to treat a rattlesnake like it's a human being. Does he intend to prosecute the rattlesnake after it bites him?
The Administration has yet to come clean to the Congress or the Amerian people in connection with the secret legal justifications it has generated, the secret practices it has employed in detaining and interrogating hundreds if not thousands of people. Even they cannot dismiss the practices at Guantanamo as the actions of a few bad people.
Ahem. If the practices he is referring to include the six specific things that the CIA has asked for, then why isn't he asking Sens. McCain, Graham, and Warner. They did, after all, hammer the bill out, and approved of those measures. The administration has been perfectly transparent on things that America needs to know about. That which we don't need to know about is kept quiet. Sen. Leahy appears to be living back in an era where the government classified things so a story wouldn't get out. This is a time where they keep things to themselves so our enemies don't find out. He has a near-conspiratorial edge to his diatribe, like the Administration is some sinister regime.
And the Administration is now obtaining license. Before they just did it quietly, and against the law, on their own say so, but now they are obtaining license to engage in additional harsh techniques that the rest of the world will see as abusive, as cruel, as degrading and even as torture. Unfortunately, a growing number of our own people see it that way too..
Well, I hate to drop this bombshell on him, bnut what will happen to the detainees is no different than what happened before. The interrogation techniques stay. It's not torture. Were it torture, it would be banned. It might be like we're being abuisive, but it's not even that. Water-boarding? Navy SEALs are subjected to water-boarding as part of their training. Cold rooms? The military makes its soldiers work in the worst possible environments in the worst possible conditions during training. It it weren't for the panty-waists in the world, the world might recognize the effectiveness of such measures, and not amateurishly proclaim this to be torture. John McCain endured torture at the hands of his Vietnamese captors. Our soldiers in World War II were subjected to far worse at the hands of the Japanese and the Germans. We are doing nothing like what those countries did. By comparison, this is mild.
Secrecy for all time is to be the Republican rule of the day. Congressional oversight is no more. Checks and balances are no more. The fundamental check that was last provided by the Supreme Court is now to be taken away. This is wrong. This should be unconstitutional. It is certainly unconscionable, and it is certainly not the action of any Senate in which I have served. It is not worthy of the United States of America. What we are saying is one person will make all the rules. There will be no checks and balances. There will be no dissent. There will be nobody else's view. And we will remove piece by piece by piece every single law that might have allowed checks and balances. We are rushing through legislation that will have a devastating effect on our security and our values, and I implore senators, step back from the brink, and think about what we are doing.
That had to hurt for him to admit that this isn't unconstitutional. Furthermore with the beginning of this little rant, one would think that there's a provision in the bill that dissolves Congress. No more oversight and no more checks and balances? This isn't a Constitutional Amendment outlawing Congress or removing any of it's powers. It is defining what the president can and can't do. It defines a legal and illegal combatant. What it isn't is a blnak check for our enemies to traipse through their procedures with ALL the protections of a United States citizen.
We should be doing, focusing on getting the terrorists, securing the nuclear material, doing the things that Senator Kerry has talked about, others have, win the peace in Afghamistan, where the Taliban has regrouped.
'Getting the terrorists?' I suppose he missed the news that we killed al-Zarqawi back in June. 'Securing nuclear material?' We did when we first entered Iraq, and we're doing it now with trying to get Iran to end it's uranium enrichment program. 'Doing the things that Senator Kerry has talked about?' Thank God we're not doing that! If we were, the UN would have voted to ask us to leave Iraq by now. And just think, with his inability to understand the law, if the Democrats win back the Senate, this is the schmuck who will chair the Judiciary Committee.
But instead the president and the Republican Senate leaders call for rubber stamping more flawed White House proposals, just in time, just in time for the run up to another election, and for the fund raising appeals to go out. And I'd hope that this time for the first time, even though the United States Senate is controlled by the presidents party that we could act as an independent branch of the government, finally serve as a check on this administration.
(Read: Shame on the Republicans.) Sen. Leahy would prefer that they roll over for the Democrats the same way the Democrats would roll over for the terrorists. This man stood on the floor of the Senate, in this same rambling, bumbling, stumbling diatribe, and proclaimed he was upset that habeas corpus was being revoked from the terrorists. Revoked? They never even had it. They can't, leagally speaking. It's not open to them. The Constitution provides American citizens with certain rights. The Fourteenth Amendment clearly--empiracally--defines a United States citizen. These people--these terrorists--don't have those rights. They can't be granted it, and should the Democrats truly make a fuss about this, and get it challenged to the Supreme Court, the high court will rule that they're wrong, the legislation and the Administration are right.
And after this debate and the rejection of all amendments intended to improve this measure, I see that that day is long past. I will continue to speak out, that's my privilege as a United States Senator. But I weep for our country and our American values and the principles on which I was raised and which I took a solemn opath to uphold. I applaud those senators who stood several times on the flor today and who have voted to uphold the best of American values. Remember we are giving a blank check to a government whose incompetence was demonstrated in historic dimensions in the lack of preparations in response to Hurricane Katrina. This is the same government in its fight against terrorism had Senator kennedy and Congressman Lewis on terrorist watch lists and then couldn't get them off. This is a government that repeatedly releases confidential family information about our armed forces and veterans. It is a government that just refuses to admit any mistakes or make any corrections and regards all of its representatives from Donald Rumsfeld to Michael Brown as doing a heck of a job.
Katrina, 9/11, terrorist watch lists, and torture. I've never had so much fun laughing than if I were at the circus. Unfortunately for us today, Sen. Leahy didn't wear his clown suit a make-up. I have to question the 'release' of 'confidential' information about veterans and active-duty military. If they are referring to the laptops that have recently gone missing, and subsequently been recovered, VA officials stated that neither were accessed. Besides, you can't blame the administration for things they have no control over, and that is one thing they didn't have control over.
This is Patrick Leahy, dear readers, and he is showing the nation that the Democrats have gone lemming; they're off the deep-end, and they just keep driving themselves further to, and over, the edge of sanity and reasoned thought. Like I said, this is amusing, but it's also sad. We can no longer have an honest debate with these people. They reach into realmns that even JRR Tolkien never envisioned, and slap it out across the media, spinning as they go, just like Michael Moore. This goes beyond unhinged. It goes waaaay beyond Bush Derangement Syndrome. These people are watching far too many X-Files repeats, and see this nation as something it isn't; they see their government as doing something it hasn't done, but is constantly assailed for doing.
The arguments today (Senator John Kerry and Dianne Feinstein joined the habeas corpus chorus, along with Senator Patrick Leahy) should show America where the Democrats stand. This was not one simpleton amongst the Democrats. They mobilized today, and they spoke out. And they spoke out in volumes that the country should recognize from the days of future past. This chorus is old and overused. And it's not going to work. Everytime these people open up their mouths, the political noose gets tighter. On November 7th, they'll go to the polls with the illusion that they'll win. On November 8th, maybe the shock will be enough to wake them up and make them realize that their ideas aren't being accepted. Of course a few are liable to find themselves unemployed. When that happens, expect this party to be certifiable.
Sabrina McKinney
Patrick Leahy has completely lost his mind. Below is a portion of his floor debate today over the detainee bill. All emphasis is mine. This transcript is courtesy of Hugh Hewitt
"This is not just a bad bill. This is truly a dangerous bill..I have been asking Secretary Rumsfeld for the last several weeks whether our actions are eliminating more of our enemies than are being created. But now we understand. We are creating more enemies than we are eliminating. Our intelligence agencies agree the global jihadist movement is spreading and adapting, and is increasing in both numbers and geographic dispersions. We aren't making ourselves safer. We're putting us more at risk. Intelligence agencies go on to note the new jihadist networks and cells with anti-American agendas are increasingly likely to emerge and the operational threat will grow not only abroad but in the homeland. This is truly chilling.
Nicely paraphrased from the New York Times arguments. And it also shows that Senator Leahy has not read enough of the National Intelligence Estimate. While it acknowledges that right now there seems to be an uptick in "sectarian violence" in Iraq, more successes on our side of the coin will deter more radical Islamicists from joining the jihad. In the end, the NIE states that we must win, and right now we're doing all right with that, but there is room for improvement.
The Bush Cheney Adminstration not only failed to stop 9/11 from happening, but for five years failed to bring Osama bin Laden to justice even though they had him cornered at Tora Bora --they yanked our special forces out of there to send them into Iraq. We witnessed the growth of additional enemies.
Who is writing this man's words? MoveOn.org? Going back to blaming the president for September 11th is ludicrous. President Bush, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, shares the blame with the Clinton Administration. But for people like Senator Leahy, history apparently began in January of 2001, and every little thing the president has done has contributed to us being attacked. Someone get this guy a straight-jacket. But wait, there's more of this craziness.
When America can be seen abandoning its basic American Democratic values, its checks and balances and its great and wonderful legal tradition, and is seen as becoming more autocratic and less accountable, how's that going to help foster democratic reforms elsewhere? Do as I say and not as I do is a model that has never successfully inspired peoples around the world, and it doesn't inspire me.
Lord, save my sanity because his is completely gone. It flew the coop obviously before this debate started. We're abandoning our 'basic American Democratic values,' with just a little over a month to go before we engage in a general election. We're abandoning those values when we say that terrorists can't be granted raights reserved for American CITIZENS only. This man is making an argument to extend American rights to its most loathsome and threatening enemies trying to kill us. That is like trying to treat a rattlesnake like it's a human being. Does he intend to prosecute the rattlesnake after it bites him?
The Administration has yet to come clean to the Congress or the Amerian people in connection with the secret legal justifications it has generated, the secret practices it has employed in detaining and interrogating hundreds if not thousands of people. Even they cannot dismiss the practices at Guantanamo as the actions of a few bad people.
Ahem. If the practices he is referring to include the six specific things that the CIA has asked for, then why isn't he asking Sens. McCain, Graham, and Warner. They did, after all, hammer the bill out, and approved of those measures. The administration has been perfectly transparent on things that America needs to know about. That which we don't need to know about is kept quiet. Sen. Leahy appears to be living back in an era where the government classified things so a story wouldn't get out. This is a time where they keep things to themselves so our enemies don't find out. He has a near-conspiratorial edge to his diatribe, like the Administration is some sinister regime.
And the Administration is now obtaining license. Before they just did it quietly, and against the law, on their own say so, but now they are obtaining license to engage in additional harsh techniques that the rest of the world will see as abusive, as cruel, as degrading and even as torture. Unfortunately, a growing number of our own people see it that way too..
Well, I hate to drop this bombshell on him, bnut what will happen to the detainees is no different than what happened before. The interrogation techniques stay. It's not torture. Were it torture, it would be banned. It might be like we're being abuisive, but it's not even that. Water-boarding? Navy SEALs are subjected to water-boarding as part of their training. Cold rooms? The military makes its soldiers work in the worst possible environments in the worst possible conditions during training. It it weren't for the panty-waists in the world, the world might recognize the effectiveness of such measures, and not amateurishly proclaim this to be torture. John McCain endured torture at the hands of his Vietnamese captors. Our soldiers in World War II were subjected to far worse at the hands of the Japanese and the Germans. We are doing nothing like what those countries did. By comparison, this is mild.
Secrecy for all time is to be the Republican rule of the day. Congressional oversight is no more. Checks and balances are no more. The fundamental check that was last provided by the Supreme Court is now to be taken away. This is wrong. This should be unconstitutional. It is certainly unconscionable, and it is certainly not the action of any Senate in which I have served. It is not worthy of the United States of America. What we are saying is one person will make all the rules. There will be no checks and balances. There will be no dissent. There will be nobody else's view. And we will remove piece by piece by piece every single law that might have allowed checks and balances. We are rushing through legislation that will have a devastating effect on our security and our values, and I implore senators, step back from the brink, and think about what we are doing.
That had to hurt for him to admit that this isn't unconstitutional. Furthermore with the beginning of this little rant, one would think that there's a provision in the bill that dissolves Congress. No more oversight and no more checks and balances? This isn't a Constitutional Amendment outlawing Congress or removing any of it's powers. It is defining what the president can and can't do. It defines a legal and illegal combatant. What it isn't is a blnak check for our enemies to traipse through their procedures with ALL the protections of a United States citizen.
We should be doing, focusing on getting the terrorists, securing the nuclear material, doing the things that Senator Kerry has talked about, others have, win the peace in Afghamistan, where the Taliban has regrouped.
'Getting the terrorists?' I suppose he missed the news that we killed al-Zarqawi back in June. 'Securing nuclear material?' We did when we first entered Iraq, and we're doing it now with trying to get Iran to end it's uranium enrichment program. 'Doing the things that Senator Kerry has talked about?' Thank God we're not doing that! If we were, the UN would have voted to ask us to leave Iraq by now. And just think, with his inability to understand the law, if the Democrats win back the Senate, this is the schmuck who will chair the Judiciary Committee.
But instead the president and the Republican Senate leaders call for rubber stamping more flawed White House proposals, just in time, just in time for the run up to another election, and for the fund raising appeals to go out. And I'd hope that this time for the first time, even though the United States Senate is controlled by the presidents party that we could act as an independent branch of the government, finally serve as a check on this administration.
(Read: Shame on the Republicans.) Sen. Leahy would prefer that they roll over for the Democrats the same way the Democrats would roll over for the terrorists. This man stood on the floor of the Senate, in this same rambling, bumbling, stumbling diatribe, and proclaimed he was upset that habeas corpus was being revoked from the terrorists. Revoked? They never even had it. They can't, leagally speaking. It's not open to them. The Constitution provides American citizens with certain rights. The Fourteenth Amendment clearly--empiracally--defines a United States citizen. These people--these terrorists--don't have those rights. They can't be granted it, and should the Democrats truly make a fuss about this, and get it challenged to the Supreme Court, the high court will rule that they're wrong, the legislation and the Administration are right.
And after this debate and the rejection of all amendments intended to improve this measure, I see that that day is long past. I will continue to speak out, that's my privilege as a United States Senator. But I weep for our country and our American values and the principles on which I was raised and which I took a solemn opath to uphold. I applaud those senators who stood several times on the flor today and who have voted to uphold the best of American values. Remember we are giving a blank check to a government whose incompetence was demonstrated in historic dimensions in the lack of preparations in response to Hurricane Katrina. This is the same government in its fight against terrorism had Senator kennedy and Congressman Lewis on terrorist watch lists and then couldn't get them off. This is a government that repeatedly releases confidential family information about our armed forces and veterans. It is a government that just refuses to admit any mistakes or make any corrections and regards all of its representatives from Donald Rumsfeld to Michael Brown as doing a heck of a job.
Katrina, 9/11, terrorist watch lists, and torture. I've never had so much fun laughing than if I were at the circus. Unfortunately for us today, Sen. Leahy didn't wear his clown suit a make-up. I have to question the 'release' of 'confidential' information about veterans and active-duty military. If they are referring to the laptops that have recently gone missing, and subsequently been recovered, VA officials stated that neither were accessed. Besides, you can't blame the administration for things they have no control over, and that is one thing they didn't have control over.
This is Patrick Leahy, dear readers, and he is showing the nation that the Democrats have gone lemming; they're off the deep-end, and they just keep driving themselves further to, and over, the edge of sanity and reasoned thought. Like I said, this is amusing, but it's also sad. We can no longer have an honest debate with these people. They reach into realmns that even JRR Tolkien never envisioned, and slap it out across the media, spinning as they go, just like Michael Moore. This goes beyond unhinged. It goes waaaay beyond Bush Derangement Syndrome. These people are watching far too many X-Files repeats, and see this nation as something it isn't; they see their government as doing something it hasn't done, but is constantly assailed for doing.
The arguments today (Senator John Kerry and Dianne Feinstein joined the habeas corpus chorus, along with Senator Patrick Leahy) should show America where the Democrats stand. This was not one simpleton amongst the Democrats. They mobilized today, and they spoke out. And they spoke out in volumes that the country should recognize from the days of future past. This chorus is old and overused. And it's not going to work. Everytime these people open up their mouths, the political noose gets tighter. On November 7th, they'll go to the polls with the illusion that they'll win. On November 8th, maybe the shock will be enough to wake them up and make them realize that their ideas aren't being accepted. Of course a few are liable to find themselves unemployed. When that happens, expect this party to be certifiable.
Sabrina McKinney
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 6:56 PM
1 Comments:
You still have it! Senator Leahy is rightly know as Leaky. He was removed from the intelligent committee. I, frankly, do not listen to him. He thinks he will be the chair of the Judicial committee. Specter is bad enough. Leaky is a good reason to have term limits for members of congress. Leaky and some other democrats also have trouble with veracity as you pointed out. When a politician makes reference to the Constitution, It should be what the Constitution says and not what they want it to say. Rawriter
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