I think Senator Lindsey Graham should be arrested and declared an enemy combatant for advocating the same for a U.S. citizen and thereby threatening the integrity of the U.S. Constitution. Alternatively, we could just reserve this option for the next time Sen. Graham breaks the law, by exceeding the speed limit, for example. After all, if it’s good enough for a terrorist suspect, he ought to be good enough for Lindsey Graham.
Seriously, how does a sitting U.S. Senator openly flout his oath to protect the Constitution like this? Here’s the oath that all senators take:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
Lindsey Graham isn’t supporting or defending the Constitution. He is the one who we must protect and defend the Constitution from.
Isn’t Mini-me(if you remember the 2008 campaign .. you know why I call Graham that) a lawyer by training?
Yes, he’s a JAG in the reserves.
He is also calling for use of drones and slamming Obama for criminalizing war because America “is the battlefield.”
This man wouldn’t know a battlefield if he saw one. The cockroaches are coming out of the woodwork, at last.
Always on about your constitution this and your oath of office that! Don’t you know that under really, really scary circumstances we don’t have the time or the luxury to be stumbling over every jot and tittle in some quaint old document?
We’re Amurikins! We’re not going to get all caught up in your gotcha game of lawyerball when there’s he-man deeds to be done in the manliest of ways. Summary executions make us all feel safer, and justice is best served with hot lead. Just ask Osama bin Laden! Ah haw, haw, haw.
“For intelligence gathering purposes.”
Yeah, you know what? I’m going to give the guy who actually got bin Laden the benefit of the doubt when it comes to knowing how to handle terrorism suspects and gather intelligence.
Especially when he’s deciding not to use the procedures developed by those who didn’t capture bin Laden.
Just a reminder: not a single terrorism suspect has been put into military detention since January 20, 2009.
This just goes to show that both parties are exactly the same, an we’re living through Bush’s Third Term.
And a whole slew of those who have been cleared haven’t been released.
Plus there are indications that the CIA strategy changed to kill instead of capture. Sorta the “Let Allah sort them out” strategy right-wingers love. Evidence is that the intelligence that targets for killing is just as lousy as that that brought a bunch of folks to Gitmo.
The record, in other words, is mixed.
And a whole slew of those who have been cleared haven’t been released despite the efforts of this administration.
FTFY. Why you want to run interference for the people who have actually prevented that from happening, by shifting the blame away from them, is beyond me.
Plus there are indications that the CIA strategy changed to kill instead of capture.
No, there really aren’t. Drone strikes aren’t replacing capture in places where capture is feasible; they’re replacing “do nothing” in places where capture is infeasible. That’s why they’re only being carried in places like the FATA of Pakistan, the rebel-controlled parts of Yemen, and Somalia.
Evidence is that the intelligence that targets for killing is just as lousy as that that brought a bunch of folks to Gitmo.
This is straight-up bullshit.
Kind of a stupid oath, though — are the Congressional Pomposities supposed to go shooting down foreign and domestic enemies with their little AK47s? Strikes me as yet another bit of strutting, macho posturing. Graham’s latest idiocy would be idiocy and worse with or without the oath.
As I’ve said many times, it’s Graham and his GOP buddies that are domestic terrorists. The President should take Lindsey’s advice and round up every Rethug pol and ship them to Gitmo forever.
Someone should challenge his law license.
Even if it was terrorism and even if it was Muslim terrorism there is no evident connection with al-Qaeda or any broader organized network of terrorists, at war with the US by their own declaration and with whom we are at war by congressional authorization.
Not every Muslim terrorist is a part of the war against al-Qaeda, even if generally in sympathy with that group.
To all appearances, this is a case of relatively isolated terrorism, not all that different from the OK city bombing or the Norwegian slaughter.
Though the police could hardly have been assured of that from the beginning.
The ordinary criminal process seems appropriate, for this fellow.
Assuming he lives.
Well, he IS from South Carolina, the Birthplace of Treason and a state that has never shown much regard for the Constitution.