Was it better under Bush/dimson/blivet?

Zero prosecutions for Wall St fraud. Nothing done at DOJ level about republican election fraud. Apparent DOJ oversight/colloberation in Occupy harassment. Hasty settlement in BP oil spill. Blank check given for drone strikes. War on pot-smoking grannies.
No, Bush DOJ wasn't better...but it wasn't a whole lot worse, either.

Everything you posited didn't actually happen, but I'm too tired to argue with you, but some stuff is arguable.

I'm not trying to make an argument out of it. I think my answers to your question were valid. Even DU polls after the election had a high response rate for replacing Holder...iirc he was #1 choice to replace in Cabinet. That alone indicates a great deal of dissatisfaction with Holder...at least on DU. And since Obama hasn't replaced him, we have to assume Obama approves of the actions to date of the DOJ.

DU and r/w websites, think he is there for the right reasons, as is our President.
Yea, I might be pie in the sky, but there are people who just impress me. The President is one, and I think Holder might be another. All the folks on DU who bash him have no idea what he has been told secretly, and no idea what he/we are up against.

and whinin' on Holder, either.. babylonsistah.

whipping post for those who need to lash out.. no matter what the facts are.

They did the same thing to Janet Reno.

It's funny that there wasn't this level of hatred to any republican Attorney General ever.

And as you said, the hatred is such, that I will carte blanche endorse anything AG Holder does.

Because if he scares them so much, he must be doing great things.
(and I fully accept he and our President are much smarter than me, and they know things we don't know.)

They haters in the republicanlibertarianteaparty are fighting for their political life.
To them it's now or never.

And in WW2, treason was not tolerated. In fact, the founding fathers said things about those that commit treason.

Benjamin Franklin could have been talking about drones when he said
"An ounce of Prevention is worth a pound of cure." Ben Franklin and all the founding fathers would have been on the side of President Obama.
No matter how people twist and turn their statements to suit their causes.

and I suspect it all has to do with guns, guns, guns.
They are deathly afraid that their gravy train is ending.

They are trying to have a coup'd'etat IMHO.

On a personal level, Holder seems like a likeable guy. I don't think he's done a great job, but apparently he's doing job to PO's satisfaction. That is why I combined the two in my low opinion of DOJ.

Speaking as a veteran, one who was enlisted and part of MI, I can say I agree. There's a helluva lot people will never know. And not every citizen has the right to know everything, according to laws already in place.

I just want to know how easy people think it is to go into hostile countries and extract US citizens from terrorist camps to bring them home for trial - and just how much evidence could possibly be brought back. I mean, really??? Sometimes people don't think it through.

Those countries don't even admit the camps are there, much less their purpose or the presence of American citizens. To me, it's a seriously ridiculous proposition. And that's just supposing we, the U.S., have no worries about exactly what the American citizen might be providing TO the terrorists. People always assume they aren't providing them with information that could be dangerous to us.

No, it's more like the people who perpetrated the Achille Lauro hijackings, or the Lockerbee bombers. We have done it, we can do it.

I feel bad about being so mean sounding above. Headache again. I apologize. We've had good discussions before, so let's start over.

My opinion is based on many factors. First, the countries. They are all extremely hostile to us. Even Pakistan. Except that I believe in that case Pakistan has given its tacit approval, no matter what has been said publicly. I believe they are in the toughest spot of all - they want to be freed of terrorist presence but dare not say or do anything overtly. That is the only logical conclusion that can be drawn from events over the last 12 years or so. They are not a weak country by any means, relative to their neighbors and the nuclear community. Therefore...

As a group, all the countries shared the same characteristics. They have terrorist camps in remote, undeveloped regions that are off the grid. Hard to get to, hard to monitor through normal means. Any new person would be noticed and captured immediately.

Because of the locations, there is no possibility of a Mossad type operation wherein they sweep down and scoop up the target and exit the country quickly. While they seem to happen quickly, in fact months and even years of tracking and planning and, in some cases, even personal relationships have been established with the target before the scoop happens. Their only time factor has been hoping the target did not die of old age prior to bring him back to Israel for trial, which has become a much more pressing consideration, obviously.

In our case, however, time may be of the essence - depending on the particular circumstances. I can easily see a situation in which it has become clear that a US citizen has just arrived in a terrorist camp with damaging information in hand that would allow the terrorist group to successfully plan and execute a horrific event in the US.

It's pretty obvious that anybody who's spent time training with terrorists would wind up being detained upon reentry into the US. So, what's a newly trained terrorist to do? I'm thinking that showing up at the US embassy in that country with suicide bomb strapped onto his chest might be what they decide is just the right sort of mission for such a person. He will have been doubly valuable to them. Again, time is an extremely pressing concern.

I'm not saying that your ideas are impossible. In fact, I am absolutely positive we have in fact recovered some people just like that. What I am saying is that sometimes decisions have to be made. You know there is a plan. You know that by the time a team is ready to pluck the citizen out of the terrorist camp, said citizen will likely have slipped away to carry out his plan and people will have died. What is your decision?
I know what mine would have to be in that situation. I will protect the innocents every time, those with no thought of murder in their hearts, just going to work on an ordinary day, living life. And then I would have to make my peace with it, or not, as best I could.

Your scenarios are interesting, but don't really align with what we are being told, which of course doesn't really mean it has anything to do with reality either. But there is supposedly a "list" (modern terminology would probably be more like "database&quot of individuals that have been approved for these targeted killings (we used to call them assassinations, but again, modern terminology). Numbers range from the mid tens (40-50) to over one hundred. (Some one said over a thousand but I suspect that was people for whom the authority was requested, but not yet granted. Many may be refused.)

Osama could have been "taken alive". We didn't even try. As that operation indicates, we have the capacity to find, identify, and capture people in fairly odd and distant places. Can there be people so far along in their activities that immediate hostile and lethal action would need to be taken? Yes, but again, I'm dubious that would be more than 5 people at any one time, not 40, or 100, or even 1000.

These killings are going on because they are politically and functionally "easy". Doing something else involves political and personal risk. A strike team might take casualties. A captive showing up in our courts, tells people that we came in to their country and took someone. We can kill with a drone strike in a remote area, and no one may even know it happened for days, weeks, or months. And those that do know aren't likely to go running to the government.

Obama has been consistent in his military policy. He has demonstrated that he feels a vulnerability on this topic. So he kept Gates on board to protect that flank from the GOP. He executed the SOFA to protect his policy from criticism from the right. He followed the military advice in Afghanistan, instead of Biden (and others). He's appointing a republican Sec Def to be his third, making it 2 republicans and one democrat. He's given up on even moving people from Gitmo, never planned on closing down the facility, just moving it. And he punted completely on civilian trials in civilian courts. So he'll never consider using law enforcement and the courts to address international terrorists. Instead he'll just find the authority to kill them on his own.

That was clear self-defense. Not one American owed his life to bring Bin Laden to the US for trial. They risked their lives to do it, but they did not have to sacrifice themselves to make it so.

As far as a list, think about this. There are Americans who are being observed for reason. Nothing has been proven. But there is reason to be concerned because of their education, access to certain information, their backgrounds, etc. If they disappear from work and home and the United States, and the evidence shows that they have left the country with damaging information, and they transferred large amounts of cash to an overseas bank account, then they just might be on a list to be killed if they turn up at a terrorist camp in Pakistan at a later date.

You know these scenarios exist and have already happened.

As far as President Obama's feelings, the only ones he has demonstrated are the tears he cried when the children were gunned down at Sandy Hook. I think he has a strong sense of duty to protect and he goes about it with clear-cut logic.

I'm not saying they "should have", but alternately, there was no real attempt to do anything else. We have cops that risk their lives everyday to arrest people. They don't get to "shoot first and ask questions later". We have diplomats that risk their lives, unarmed, everyday. Do I think Seal's should go on suicide missions? No. Do I think they were ALREADY at risk? Yes. Do I think the risk of actually considering taking him alive was all that much higher? Can't really know, but most of the public after action reports indicate they had no real intention.

These drones are using weapons originally designed for armored vehicles. We are shooting them into buildings and light vehicles. You're going to kill otherwise innocent people doing that. Why is it okay to risk their lives, but not Navy Seals? This is law and order we're talking about here. People "die for our freedoms" and we accept it as necessary. Why isn't "dying for our freedoms" enforcing laws in the same category?

As for your scenario. This list is VASTLY longer than what one could reasonably consider at any one time. And furthermore, they can still be arrested and brought to trial. Nothing in your scenario prevents us from capturing them and bringing them to trial. It would be, and should be, a rare occurrence that we have to kill someone because the threat is so imminent.

"privy to stuff we don't have to know?" WE don't have to know because we're just the CITIZENS of this country?

"Was it better under Bush/dimson/blivet?" Shouldn't it be for the cripes sake? Shouldn't it be better?

WOW, *smh*

given the broad scope of this world, and our not need to know about stuff that none of us can change? Wow, backatcha.

it is unrealistic for us to think we are privy to everything going on...why bother then to have "representatives" or elections of "leaders".

having a transparent government is one thing - but to have to know the nitty gritty of every high intel security action disempowers the the president and endangers the security of our loyal citizens.

for example, today, are they giving this renegade ex policeman the benefit of a jury while they are on an all out manhunt and there has already been some "collateral damage" following the shooting of 3 police officers? hell no! that guy will be dead by morning. and everyone in socal will be breathing a sigh of relief.

Thank you.

oh that's right - we're just citizens, we don't have to know - just trust that Obama will do the right thing, right? I do not trust that any president or politician will do the right thing INCLUDING Obama.

think, for cripes sake.

to cnn's article that seems comprehensive.

because murdering innocent civilians on US soil is just unacceptable.

was elected as such..but really, he is a republican. the only thing i give him dem credit for is his stance on social security.

He may be "mavericky" at times, but is pretty liberal.

then why is he gathering up repubs and gop monies against deFazio?