I should have added Obama’s decision to continue “extraordinary rendition”–kidnapping innocent people to torture them–to my list of reasons why I’m done with him.
P.S. to my Obamabots Column
Ted Rall
http://rall.comTed Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Mr. Rall had a cartoon a few years ago that the Constitution requires that each president must be worse than his predecessor. I thought Bush, Jr. made this impossible. I seem to have been wrong.
Bush, Jr. started the unnecessary war in Afghanistan, and greatly expanded the low-level war in Iraq started by Bush, Sr. and continued by Clinton. Bush, Jr. also introduced ‘enhanced interrogation,’ which, under executive order, Congressional rubber-stamp, and Supreme Court ruling can NEVER be called torture under US law (and the NYT explained that they would NEVER call what the US does under the President’s orders torture, in order to remain neutral).
So, when Obama said he would never abandon the ideals of the US and use torture, the statement had all the old Bush, Jr. significance: he only uses ‘enhanced interrogation’, never torture.
But Obama expanded the military efforts from Afghanistan and Iraq into the Yemen and Pakistan.
And, when I tried to point out that the final version of Osama bin Laden’s assassination cannot possible be true, I was told, ‘You weren’t there, you have no proof, the US President NEVER lies, so you’re just like the Birthers, demanding to see the long form of the death certificate.’
While Obama spoke of a ‘firefight’ and while the versions changed daily for one week, the AP story said the photos of the three male bodies released by the Pakistanis had all been shot in the back of the head at point blank range. Which does NOT fit with the official story. If one man in the compound was shooting at the Seals from inside a reinforced building, how did he end up shot in the back of the head? Ricochet?
Fox News reported on 2 May that the original orders were to kill every man in the compound (how they got that story isn’t clear, but it certainly seems to have been correct).
The ‘fog of war’ excuse is inoperative, since the Office of Strategic Communication wrote the scenario to show that Obama was on top of the whole operation, watching everything on CCTV broadcast by the Seal camera crew. So how could they have been mistaken that bin Laden was hiding behind his wife? (The fact that the Pakistanis reported that the woman killed was a Pakistani and was NOT killed where they said bin Laden was killed made that OSC version inoperative the next day, so it got ‘improved’.)
But still the Obamabots (now expanded by the bin Laden operation to include the centre right) agree that the US President always tells the truth, and anyone who questions him is an Enemy of the State.
So hello. Enemy-of-the-State Rall.
Can I join this Enemy of the State club, because I am no longer on the Obama/Bush bandwagon either. And I think I am in fine company here.