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CIA rendition flights from rustic North Carolina called to account by citizens

theguardian.com

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Re: CIA rendition flights from rustic North Carolina called to account by citizens

#181
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think both of your statements can apply to any President. For instance, Trump has called for "fire and fury" against NK and "bombing the hell" out of our enemies. He's embraced torture as a mechanism for obtaining information and a cursory Google search shows that Gitmo conditions have gotten significantly worse over the past year. Frankly, this seems like a misdirected personal crusade of yours against Obama when…

> this seems like a misdirected personal crusade of yours against Obama I took it more as him pointing out that while Trump, right or wrong, is crucified in the press on a daily basis Obama was able to successfully spin a benevolent image to the point that he was absolutely held to a different standard. All presidents have blood on their hands, but there is a certain irony in Obama being the first Nobel peace price w…

That's fairly true, although I suspect the reason for the press' attitude towards Trump lies in the ratings/advertisement-driven nature of media. I don't think they're necessarily being held to different standards. Trump's daily tweets are cannonfodder to any (faux)journalist whereas Obama rarely gave anything for the media to criticize, which is why they harped so much on his birth certificate.

To your second point, I think the sheen of Obama's Presidency is definitely beginning to fade a bit. His failure to truly effect change in the Arab Spring showed amateurism in foreign policy. If there's any irony, it's in the Nobel laureate selection process (at least for the Peace prize); Kissinger won the damn thing in 73, which should tell anyone that the whole award is a farce.

Re: CIA rendition flights from rustic North Carolina called to account by citizens

#182
post #4

That's real optimistic of the Guardian but somehow I doubt there's all that much grass roots support against rendition flights. We live in an age where "Muslim ban" sounds like appropriate policy to about half the population. In Democracy the people get the government they deserve. Guess we really don't deserve human rights and habeus corpus.

> In Democracy the people get the government they deserve.

Small but important nuance: the majority vote gets the government they "deserve" ("voted for"). The rest has to go along with the majority vote. The rest are people as well, but they're marginalised by both your quote as well as by reality. The difference can be small. Case in point: the last US presidential election.

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