So says Ralph Nader, and I agree. (All modern US presidents are war criminals, of course.)

http://www.towleroad.com/2011/03/nader.html

I agree when it comes to Afghanistan. One easy measure of whether you're doing the right thing is are you following the right process. When you're a teen and you want to go to a party that you know your parents won't let you go to, you don't ask because you know the answer. You just do it and hope you won't get caught. At least I did that a few times

No matter how we entered Afghanistan the President had the opportunity in 2009 to go to Congress and get the war declaration. Instead, he chose to operate in this grey area which may or may not be legal.

I see Libya a little differently. That is a UN sanctioned action and by the US being a member, Congress has already given their approval for acting like a member....imho.

If we get out in the next few days, which is being reported as the President's desire, then ok. But somehow I don't think that's going to be the case.

Obama has essentially ended the Iraq War started based on a lie by the Bush administration, and was stuck with Afghanistan because the Bush administration missed an opportunity to capture or kill Ossama bin Laden.

Regardless of what the Obama administration says about "preventing terrorism", I doubt we would be spending so much blood and treasure in the latter if bin Laden were not next door.

As for Libya, by the time the USA entered WWII, Germans had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens - mostly Jews - under the leadership of a madman who many said it was none of our business to interfere with...until he declared war on us.

To make Obama out to be a "war criminal" is more than a bit of a stretch, it suggests an arbitrary and absolutist definition of what a war criminal is.

If he does not put USA infantry troops on the ground, I think what he is doing in Libya is appropriate, just as I agreed with our no-fly-zone in Iraq.

If critics of Obama's war policy applied a fragment of their moral judgement to disambiguating the criminal economic policy of usury in this country we would not have the financial mess that truly threatens our nation.

Now Sport, you know as well as I that it would require said critics to snap out of their Faux News coma and actually think for themselves....silly Sport, you make me laugh! Sadly, that will be the enemy that destroys us...ourselves...or more specifically, the insane greed of the few who make it so difficult for the many. It won't be some ugly, pock-marked dictator or some rogue who hides in caves. It is our fellow greedy banker and investment guru. And here we all thought it would be someone who practices Islam...it is our own "kind" who has ruined this nation in ways the terrorists could never have dreamed.

It is also significant to note that as in George H. W. Bush's "Operation Desert Storm", and as did not happen in George W. Bush's Operation Iraqi Freedom", the Arab League - now led by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hosyar Zebari - is part of the "Biggest Arab Coalition in 20 Years" in supporting Obama's so-called "Operation Odyssey Dawn".

This could still become a quagmire if Obama allows himself to be sucked into another ground war. So far that seems unlikely, and a lot of circumstances are arguing against it.

sportinlife, might I point out that Obama (like his predecessors) is a willing stooge of the financial kingpins whose campaign donations he relied upon in 2008, and will again next year? He is the Manservant of Corporate Greed.

millerbeach, I think it's time to get your "Faux News" talking-doll chip replaced, you effing moron.

I would agree that he has been used by them. I will not yet judge him as "willing". The next presidential election may tell.

"effing moron" Wow...Sorry to see that bitterness has so clouded your judgement that you can no longer have a civil conversation on a message board.

The result of the efforts of the alliance to "protect" the innocent in Libya will depend on one paragraph in Obama's speech tonightMuslim countries have never participated fully or for any extended period of time in an alliance against one they perceive as being their own.

Should they do so now, it would be as earth-shattering as the revolutions themselves, that are currently sweeping the region. Perhaps as earth-changing in a geopolitical sense as the earthquakes of the past decade have been geographically.

The surface may look the same, but below it may be totally rearranged.

These changes would be fundamental.

It is hard to imagine that these changes will not soon confront the most powerful authoritarian nation: China.

I think the face of the Arab world has forever changed, virtually overnight. Decades-old regimes tumbling down, thanks in large part to social media. I would not hold my breath waiting for change in China, but I do think it is coming. It is inevitable. Communism really doesn't work, but it worked best in China, yet even China can't overcome the power of the social media via the internet. Try as they may, they have been unable to control it. I am waiting for meaningful change to come to a continent in dire need of change...Africa.

I think the reason it is so hard for us in the USA to imagine change coming to China is that we misiterpret the fundamental threat to China's stability. It is not so much "communism" as the "Communism" prevailing in that nation.

Small "c" communism did not contemplate the capitalist structure that now overlays China's former nominal Maoist system. Rather than a country of the people who control their own system and fate, it has become a single large corporation that determines the best interest of its employees.

The same would be true here if we had a corporate president rather than an elected one.

Perhaps the nearest likelihood to that in the current USA political atmosphere would be a Mitt Romney presidency. Or worse, a Haley Barbour presidency. That is something like the difference between a George Soros presidency or a Bill Gates presidency, to take a couple of examples from the corporate world. The formers might shroud the loss of democracy in marginally humanitarian rule, whereas the latters might descend into the kind of corporate fiefdoms dominated by a central monarchy that we saw in Europe before the extended revolutions there roughly from the early 18th to the mid nineteenth centuries.

On a side note, I read an article in the paper this morning about relatively well-to-do pregnant Chinese mothers who have generated an underground market in birthing "American" babies. So much for shangri-La.

We do. You need $300 million to get elected, and it mostly comes from the candidate's corporate overlords, many of them CEOs who have been selling arms to Qaddafi and other despots for generations.

Agree.

Tonight on Frontline (PBS): CIA insider says Obama's team assured "continuity" with Bush policies despite the candidate's vows to change them:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ir...rsial-programs/

There is a little problem with your argument of habeas corpus. Where are the bodies, since the only way those tortured under Obama could be kept silent is for them to be stowed away in secret jails or mudered and desaparcidos?

I find the difficult-to-hide results of your premise highly unlikely.

What would Bush have done had he found bin Laden in a compound in a supposedly friendly country? Bomb the compound and neighborhood leaving no certain evidence that he actually got the guy? What would aviator Perry have done? These are your alternatives in our two-party system.

Greenwald on Obama fulfilling Dick Cheney's dreams yet again, instituting extrajudicial executive killing of US citizens:

http://politics.salon.com/2011/09/30/awlaki_6/singleton/

They would never have been able to catch the guy, so they did the next best thing.

Might as well nuke the whole area anyway.

So much for you being a constitutionalist.

But what about the babies, CC? Wouldn't that be the same as abortion? Funny how you would defend the unborn (and rightfully so) but once those babies are out of the womb, it's o.k. to nuke them? That is some mighty fuzzy logic!

Nuke 'em all and let God sort them out.

There is no God.

CC, I truly don't understand why you aren't an Obama supporter, he's been pleasing you a lot more than liberals lately.

Yeah, right.






You guys are so damn gullible it's hilarious.




He's a cancer to this country economically, rivaling only Jimmy Carter in my lifetime, and that's why I can't stand him as a president.

Seems like the third term of Dubya, economically, to me. Can you be specific? You never are.


So where's the evidence of Awlaki's guilt? There's plenty of it? Then why not try him? Glenn Greenwald:

http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/03/awlaki_7/singleton/

Let's see. Just to name a few...

• Job killing regulations
• Unemployment approaching double digits
• Horrible economic team making horrible decisions
• Anti-growth laws that stifle businesses

Just when I thought there was no way I could think less of you.

What a contemptible "human" being.

Why thank you, Mr. Too Stupid to Recognize Sarcasm When I See It.

About 1% of job losses are attributable to regulations. So that's not really an issue.

Had Congress actually passed a real stimulus we'd probably have a better employment number now.

Congress is really to blame. They could bring money back, they could tax business that sits on profits, they could raise taxes on business income....all would force business to hire more.

Agreed about the horrible economic team.

Laws aren't hindering business. It's lack of a market. The way to stimulate the consumers is for people to be employed. But you're people are hell bent on laying people off. They're doing their best to screw enough workers so that the President looks bad.

It's time for a big stimulus and some changes to tax code to stop the movement of capital overseas.

The Bush/Republican method hasn't worked for 10 years. We're insane to continue down that road. It's time to go back to the ways that built the country after the war.

Yeah, I'm the CEO of a company. Like I'm going to HIRE more people when my profits are down due to increased taxes. One of these days you'll wake up.

Never mind Obamacare and how the burdensome cost it will impose on businesses has resulted in more companies simply not able to hire because of the still unknown amount of just how much that piece of legislation will add to their costs.






Like the boom of the 1990s, when the GOP ran Congress? I'll take that any day. At least Clinton and HIS policies were anti-business, anti-jobs like Obama's are. Even his DOJ and various departments are anti-business. All they care about is their union hacks. One look at Boeing and their desire to build a plant in North Carolina and the NLRB's attempt to stop the creation of 2000+ jobs says it all.

You know, after doing more thinking (that's why you smelled all the smoke), I've come to realize that you and too many others here are really deprived, boring, bitter people. You can't recognize sarcasm, parody, facetiousness, or anything else one might use to say something a bit differently. It's kinda sad when I have to pop back in and remind folks that such comments are said in jest, trying to add a little levity into something rather serious. Hell, I do it for situations even more tragic and bloodier. Anyone who thinks I advocate dropping nuclear weapons on civilians (well, OK, maybe Cubs fans) when I fight the pro-abortion monsters that populate the board here and elsewhere is just nuts.

Life's too short to get all worked up like you humorless pinheads do.

Killing them all and letting God sort them out is suppose to be some form of levity? Wow...you ARE from a different planet. Ironic you consider yourself the voice of humor, "popping in" from time to time...not to distribute "levity", but to stir things up by injecting your opinion on abortion, ad nauseum, and out of context. But hey, it's all swell with you, because this is all just a game, isn't it, CC? It's nice when it's all about you....

Au contraire, my little friend. It's about YOU. About me freeing your depressing lives from the humorless, bitter, angry lives that they are.

You know when you're pointing at someone there are three fingers pointing back at you!

Boney, scraggly, bent fingers don't matter one bit, especially when I'm right.

I refer to my earlier assertion:Rather than the fruitless attempt to prosecute Obama - or any major world leader - for alleged crimes committed in supposed self-defense, more would be accomplished by occupying Wall Street where the folks who make money off the status quo use much of it to maintain that status quo with the purchase of politicians - Obama included if they can afford him.

Perry is cheaper, though by his own testimony he apparently has a $5000 minimum.

And in your mind you're right a lot.