Intro: "What if President Obama raised taxes without congressional approval? It sounds preposterous, yet US presidents now routinely wage war on their own - and in Libya, Obama isn't even pretending Gaddafi poses a threat to us."
President Obama, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking on the situation in Libya from the White House, 04/02/11. (photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
|
THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community. |
Comments
We are concerned about a recent drift towards vitriol in the RSN Reader comments section. There is a fine line between moderation and censorship. No one likes a harsh or confrontational forum atmosphere. At the same time everyone wants to be able to express themselves freely. We'll start by encouraging good judgment. If that doesn't work we'll have to ramp up the moderation.
General guidelines: Avoid personal attacks on other forum members; Avoid remarks that are ethnically derogatory; Do not advocate violence, or any illegal activity.
Remember that making the world better begins with responsible action.
- The RSN Team
American arms and CIA advisors from Egypt - war for Oil - double profit for military .. nothing to do with democracy.
Madman Sarkozy -
... endless blather from neoconservative s and liberal interventionist s about how our wars will give birth to the rule of law in the Middle East ignores how those wars have led an increasingly imperial presidency - controlled by AIPAC and NYT propaganda (like in Iraq)
H.Clinton is said to have threatened to resign if Obama didn't go along with enthusiastic participation in the no-fly op and whatever other ops may be envisioned under the rubric of protective intervention of the Libyan rebels, er, civilian population.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC30Ak01.html We should get out and let the Libyans settle their own affairs, and get our hands off their resources. Foreigners setting up a destabilizing force and fomenting civil unrest are committing an illegal act, against which the Libyan government is entitled to defend itself. The use of the weapon of mass destruction depleted uranium, instead of alternatives, will cause Libyan deaths, and birth defects for a thousand years, and medical expenses for this time.
Wish I could give you 75 thumbs up. Oh, and for your introductory comments as well.
Attack on Libya is attack on Africa - now USraeli propaganda is digging "Qaddafi chemical weapons" we have to protect - "Libyan people" - aka CIA trained rebels. We should apply "three strike and you are out" - Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya - put US military criminals to prison for life.
It was OK then, but now it is atrocious...
War corporations seems pushing hard Obama into war or maybe he's trying to be more likeable to right wing even driving America to a constitucional chaos...
History shows that empires had their rises and falls and Obama should beware of this...
Present economic and social crisis in America nowadays should be viewed as an alert: decline is nearing and despairing acts can hurry this.
Please, dear God, "...Deliver us from (ALL) evil..."! [Part of the end of The Lord's Prayer.]
It has never been more clear that the war against Libya is a CIA project. Even the Sec. of Defense seems not too care much about it. He won’t say anything nice about it. But no one in the white house or pentagon wants another Bay of Pigs, so they support the CIA’s proxy war. The CIA is pretty incompetent. It really thinks it can win a “war” with a proxy army that really has no discipline or any training more than for terrorism and murder. Libya does not really have a formal standing army. It has only a militia and a little equipment. It would be a very easy target for a real army. But the CIA is not that. We are about a week away from the Bay of Pigs moment when the CIA terrorists will face being overrun unless there is a massive bombardment of Libyan forces and government and some rapid deployment of marines. Let’s see what Obama does. We know what happened to the last president who refused the CIA’s urgent call for support. He died in a hail of bullets in Dallas. This is what passes for "government of the people, by the people, and for the people in the US.
Africa mostly supports Qaddafi. Stupid Pentagon and State Department - AIPAC, Neocons - destroyed USA.
Seriously, I know that the m.s.m. is unreliable for anything but sports, entertainment and weather. What I DON'T know is what "imperial" objectives we could have in dropping bombs on Libya's military. Are we being lied to again? Do the rebels actually NOT want help? Does Libya have any resources conservatives want?
I feel like I'm alone here. Personally, I think invading Iraq and Afghanistan was wrong BECAUSE we were only doing it to colonize them. I feel the same about attacking Pakistan, and I felt the same about Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia, Cuba, Iran in the '50, Chile, Nicaragua, etc.
On the other hand: I think we SHOULD HAVE used our military to affect Haiti, Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, etc. I now feel the same about Libya. For me IT DOES matter what our intentions and motivation are. For me it IS possible to use our military to do the right thing. Often, a good way for me to guess what our intentions are is to guage what REPUBLICANS think about military intervention. If they're FOR it, I'm against it, and vice versa. They HATE the idea of wasting our weapons liberating people. For them was is ALWAYS colonial.
Please weigh in...
How can we have imperialist designs on a country without ground troops?
I looked up the claim about oil in Libya. It appears that it's the fourth leading producer of oil in Africa but has the biggest oil reserves in Africa, according to Nation Master dot com, which seems to be the most honest site about this subject I could find. By the way, according to it, the U.S. (even though it's the THIRD biggest country on Earth) has only the 14 most oil reserves (about half of what's in Libya). So, you may be onto something there.
Still, if Kadafi is removed and replace by something like what Egypt wants, how does this help the oil industry? Again, I said, "IF".
By the way, about your comment concerning what we can supply vs. our needs, it doesn't really matter anyway. NO MATTER WHERE THE OIL IS DRILLED it's still an international commodity that is bought and sold by international corporations who have no regard to nationality. The oil is drilled where it's available, refined wherever the refineries are, and sold to whoever will pay for it. There is ABSOLUTELY NO BENEFIT AT ALL to drilling for it here, EVEN IF WE ACTUALLY DID have enough oil to supply our needs, which obviously we don't.
I see those girls everyday and almost want to cry sometimes wondering WHY so many people seem dead set against them ever having sound opportunities.Sorry for being maudlin.
WHO?!?! Just who exactly is pulling Obama's "strings," pray tell? When the majority of his campaign funds came from the public sending in $5 here and $10 there? Yes, he got SOME funding from corporations but that accounted for maybe 5%-15% of his total campaign funds. The rest came from the American people.
Could we simply open up more areas for drilling in North America, and stop importing oil from anywhere? Oil production in North America has been increasing for the past three years despite being excluded from the proven most potentially productive areas. I do not believe that the average American wants to be part of a country that rules the world; but our leaders in Washington all think that way. A glaring example in National Public Radio, which spends about 80% of it's broadcasts telling us news and events for everywhere but the United States.
Sunshine and wind are currently pretty plentiful. Unfortunately, they're SO widely available that it's pretty hard to corner the market on them and make a SERIOUS KILLING.
IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE IT'S DRILLED. The news lies about this for a reason. The fact is that, if you live in Saudi Arabia, the gas you buy at the pump is no more "Arabian" than the gas you buy in Iceland or anywhere else. The corporations who buy and sell oil don't care where it comes from.
If you have your own oil well, refinery and pump, in your own back yard, it matters where it comes from. Otherwise, it does NOT.
Banks are hoarding oil in huge tanks and forcing the price up, because they know the price is increasing and, aside from another mortgage crisis, dont have the brains to figure anything constructive to do to make money.
How much oil the U.S. actually has = 22,450,000,000 barrels (this INCLUDES ANWR)
years the U.S. could supply its own needs = 2.9742190191
That’s a decimal point, NOT a comma. The entire U.S. (INCLUDING ANWR) has enough oil to “supply our needs” for under THREE YEARS.
You might say, yeah but maybe if we destroy ANWR and start drilling we MIGHT find more. Yeah, maybe. Then again the amount of oil I mentioned that we use, was based on 2007. We use more every year.
If you want to stop relying on “foreign oil” (even though ALL oil is equally domestic and foreign, because those concepts have no meaning to a fungible commodity), then we must stop relying on ALL oil.
Deal with it.
The Federal government is a Trinity because the framers wanted each branch to monitor the others. Basically, the Constitution says what the plutocrats say it does, since they are the ones who select the politicians in both elective branches. They pay the money and the (successful) politicians dance to their tunes.
The Libya thing may not be the worst of his crimes, but it is perhaps the most easily impeachable. I'll settle for what we can get!
If this is about committing troops without congressional approval, you'll have to give me a moment to laugh histerically. Why NOW... SUDDENLY an outcry from the left for impeachment? Does the left remember that every president for the past several decades has done the same thing?
cont.
Personally, I began my voting career with a vote for Adlai Stevenson--and can't remember when, if ever, I've cast a vote for anyone on the right.
Billy Bob: You are correct that the Constitution has been ignored--at tremendous cost to us all--for decades now in the matter of who in our system can decide to enter the nation into war. When progressives--among whom I like to count myself--move for impeaching people like George the Second, they get shouted down for "playing politics in time of war." For just that reason, now is the best of all possible times for restoring the rule of law in America. Let's ALL--with the left leading the way--use impeachment to get rid of the law-breaker presently using the White House to encroach on our liberties and surrender our birth-rights.
I don't entirely disagree with your OR agree with you.
I guess my point is that the term "impeachment" is impossible to set aside from "playing politics". My opinion is that, no matter what our better motives are, this IS politics.
You can reliably count on repugs wanting to impeach a Democrat as soon as he/she wins an election. You can also reliably count on ME wanting to impeach a repug as soon as his crimes become apparent, which is usually soon after the election.
cont.
The reason I'm willing to tollerate imperfection in a Democrat is that I know it will only be worse in a repug. I know that anything I say to bring down the presidency of a Democrat will be met with a lot of cooperation on the right. This is about nothing more or less than winning and losing to them. After what happened to this country from 2001 to 2009 when bush left office, I have to be EXTREMELY angry at Obama to lash out against him.
If you've followed my comments on these threads you'll realize that I have lashed out against him many times already.
Personally, if Dean or Feingold run against him in the next primary, I promise to vote for them. Other than that, I'd only be willing to hold him to a standard I see applied equally to both sides of the fence.
It seems to me that whenever a repug is in office there's no serious organized outcry to impeach because repugs are PROUD of his crimes and because the left is divided between those who have no balls, and those who are actually repugs with a little capital D next to their name.
Whenever a Democrat is in office, the rules change. NOW... SUDDENLY there's an outcry for impeachment coming from both sides. repugs ALWAYS want to impeach anyone they didn't elect. Democrats are willing to impeach because they only have the courage to stand up to other democrats and can be talked into ANYTHING the repugs tell them.
Anything about people is a lie.
Count dead last two years - Iraq, Afghanistan, now Libya.
30 thousand /$1 million each per head per year in Afghanistan - larger and larger military budgets in bankrupt economy. Hey - jobs are here - McDonald is hiring 20 000 next week. Can you live on it?
We are providing air cover to the CIA trained and Arabs get Africa oil in a civil war.
This is Obama/Clinton CRIME.
So even when we follow the Constitution, we tend to get led about by the nose. But this is precisely why Madison and company attempted to institutionaliz e a deliberative congressional process that would act as a check upon the impulses toward war. Lately, by a kind of tacit agreement from our altogether compromised Congress, we've decided such a process is too inefficient for our purposes. If you're happy with the way things are going lately, fine!--let's continue upon our merry way! If not, wouldn't it be interesting to give the Constitution a renewed lease on all our lives?
we are bombing Tripoli, killing people and party democrats are calling it "aide"?
I grew up in totalitarian state - perhaps skepticism is more embedded in my experience - but blindly eating this USraeli Libya war propaganda and lies - is too much.
Most of the time people did not agree with me - this is why I did move.
Under Qaddafi I would be long dead - but when Reagan killed his baby daughter Hana by bomb - sorry. And Obama did the same last week! American humanitarian aide?
Any idiot would know that people do not forget bombs - and that nationalism trumps any power.
The moment bombs dropped Libya was united.
Winners are Russians (more money from Europe for their oil) and Chinese - better strategic position in Africa.
Even on Al Jazeera Arabic station one can read between lines who is being killed in Libya - African blacks by rebels from Egypt and Qatar.
People that Qaddafi employed and gave them some basic substance.
Will racist Napoleon Sarkozy feed African blacks, Romanian gypsies he has camps for?
Right now our friends wants to stop investigate Goldstone -1400 dead in Gaza - NYT is quiet.
nevercastleadag ain.wordpress.com/
LIBYAN BOMBARDMENT AND THE SIDELINING OF THE AFRICAN UNION ..
The Civil War in Libya is NOT for any government/democratic institutions - like university, court.
It is for control of OIL export port of Berga with NATO air support Afghanistan style operation of Northern/Eastern Warlords liberating Kabul/Tripoli.
We were going through this with Iraq when Judy of the New York Times' Judith Miller had all these "facts" lies.
Who? Where? I have not seen any reporting of this in any news sources. Yes you have quoted a number of independent websites but I'm sorry, just because it's on a web site doesn't mean it happened, or that it wasn't taken out of context.
Are you saying then that the people who went to the U.N. and asked for help weren't really from Libya and a number of other Arab countries? Where is the proof of this, other than a few far-far-far-left independent websites you mentioned?
No Child Left Behind, as it was originally conceived, was meant to actually help children in impoverished areas, with things like vouchers to private schools for inner-city kids and things like this. It was written as a bi-partisan bill with I believe Kennedy as one of the writers before he died. So in its original form, yeah Obama could get behind it. But then, like with so many things during the Bush era, before it could get to the floor it was rewritten and riders were added, with things like standardized testing laws that split the divide between expensive education and public education even further. The only thing we can do now is either repeal it or build upon it. Obama embraces building upon it.
Since when has Obama ever EMBRACED Guantanamo? One of his campaign promises was to close it and I understand he hasn't done that just yet but every time he has proposed moving the prisoners to a secure facility in America it has been delayed and protested and delayed again, usually by Republicans. Not to mention the fact that, some of the people in Guantanamo actually are there because they are terrorists who represent a threat to America. And at least a few who were imprisoned unlawfully are likely to become terrorists when they get out. So it's a rock and a hard place situation, really. What more do you want the guy to do?
Once again, when did Obama ever EMBRACE the tax cuts? He said time and again that the taxes needed to be restored to mid-90s levels for at least the rich. But he also didn't want the majority of America to wake up one day and have their taxes going up. While I wish the Democrats in the previous session had shown more gall and let all the tax cuts run out, I also understand that in some ways the Republicans put them over a barrel, since the same bill that ensured the tax cuts also ensured unemployment benefits that people are in desperate need of now. And since the Republicans wouldn't vote on anything else until the tax situation was resolved, they had little choice but to either let taxes for everyone go up, or extend tax cuts for the rich. I hated to see that happen but I was glad to see Congress actually get some things done during that lame duck session, like ensuring health care for the 9/11 volunteers and other important programs like that.
RSS feed for comments to this post.