President Obama did what none of his predecessors could accomplish, and without waterboarding.

by Jorge Reyes

A lot of right wing ideologues are infuriated, to say the least, at the fact that it was a center to left President who successfully sent the order to murder America's Public Enemy No. 1, Osama bin Laden. As a refresher, we must never forget that one of the many ironies of this same President who signed an executive order clearing the way to ban interrogation techniques of detainees in Guatanamo. Those interrogation techniques had been a hallmark of the Bush administration's war on terror. In fact, it was a program perversely relished by the political right at all levels.  Ex President George W. Bush is nowhere to be found these days. According to what his wife Laura to a news outlet, he just wants to enjoy the fruits of a private citizen. Good riddance, really. He was, by far, the most idiotic President we have ever had.

Regardless of this, key figures from Bush's administration are claiming that most of this victory is theirs too. After all, they were bold enough to inflict waterboarding and other harsh methods on helpless prisoners.

Dick Cheney, a man I have never been able to stand, told some media outlets that "it wouldn't be surprising" if the enhanced interrogation program put in place during "our first term" produced results that contributed to its success. Some of Bush's closest political advisers, joined the fray too. According to them, it is very clear that enhanced interrogation helped "create an environment that gave rise to this information."

What these men conveniently don't mention is they were also part of an administration that let bin Laden slip out of the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan and eventually find refuge in Abbottabad, Pakistan, living it off in a million dollar compound and not in a cave as it was assumed. Like most and much of what that Bush dude did, it was up to Obama to clean up the mess, which includes a war in Iraq, an economy on the brink of a depression, and our standing with the international community. Further, they also left us an extremely bloated bureaucracy, Homeland Security, estimated to have cost us more than a trillion dollars. All in the spirit, of course, to fight terror. Along the way, many of our civil liberties went to hell, too. But as it is, we already live in a police state. We just dont want to admit it.

What is left in much of these discussions is the fact that brutal interrogation methods had very little to do with the capturing of bin Laden. The key to locating bin Laden was to find his trusted courier, a man with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Glenn Carle, a retired CIA officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee, told the New York Times that coercive techniques "didn't provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information" and most of his colleagues felt it was "un-American and did not work."

For a country that wants to be a beacon of morality, admonishing other nation states when they are failing to do the same, it is one of the strangest twists of fate that we seem to legitimize torture, when need be, when desired, when it is part of our national interest, which in this day and age means just about anything.

Obama achieved his mission accompkished not by continuing on the same habit of his predecessors. He did their unfinished work without adopting any of their methods. That's something to think about, at a time when everyone is now claiming victory for a job well done.

Sarah Palin for president in 2012? How dumb can we be?

By Jorge Reyes

I'm one of those people who love to read other people literally. I often equally enjoy to take them at face value. Dare I say that I also tend to be a bit sarcastic?

Since Sarah Palin seems to be a name much talked about as a possible presidential contender in 2012, I think that someone ought to scrutinize her recent ramblings at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville.

Did you watch her less than lackluster performance?

It doesn't matter if you did or didn't because basically she simply gave vent to that “creedal passion” of certain groups who feel that they are not represented in the halls of congress, never mind that most of what they say isn't true. Short of going through their entire list of complaints, you probably already know their basic ones: President Obama is a person not to be distrusted (he could also be of foreign extraction, so watch out); the economic bailout amounts to socialism; the healthcare reform infringes on people's rights; the behemoth of Washington is eroding states's rights. Dare I say it also, do I hear calls for secession from the Union?

All of us have been privy to all of these rhetorical-filled flairs and vitriol by some who consider themselves to be part of the new dispossessed. And while there's no evidence to feel that way, they believe it and that's enough for them to consider it true.

But now they have a savior, someone who happens to also be one of the least qualified woman in this country for such an important responsibility, Sarah Palin. Not that I have anything against her personally. I just don't think she has anything to offer any of us in the form of leadership.

Sorry folks, Sarah Palin isn't much to boast about, and, no, we're not going down the path of socialism. If the economic bailout has done anything, it is to keep the basic structure of mixed capitalism alive and well, thank you very much. In fact, if we are dumb enough to think of the rantings of Ms. Palin as anything other than vapid soundbytes for the evening news, then we have no right to complain when others call us Americans dumb, as when the British magazine The Daily Mirror did when George W. Bush was forced upon us as president by the Supreme Court.

Why am I being so harsh on someone as loveable, as promising, as pure as Ms. Palin?

For starters, she has neither the command of international issues nor the intellectual capacity to verbalize them. She has neither a vision nor a coherent plan for anything beyond platitudes.

As I wrote, her performance at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville was awful and it deserves more scrutiny. After her speech during a question and answer session moderated by Judson Phillips, the founder of the Tea Party, about a plethora of issues Ms. Palin responded with the typical gibberish answers she's well known for. This time, though, her answers were worse than ever.

She was asked about the Palin Plan, as opposed to the Obama Plan. With a timbre of fear in her voice, she responded: “When it comes to national security, as I ratchet down the message on national security, it's easy to just kind of sum it up by repeating Ronald Reagan when he talked about the Cold War. And we can apply this now to our war on terrorism, you know. Bottom line, we win, they lose. We do all that we can do to win.”

Not sure what to make of this statement, but then neither did many of the people in attendance who simply cheered and applauded with an effusion of energy.

When asked about the budget, she dutifully answered: “We've got to rein in spending, obviously, and not raise it extremely high budgets and then say, OK, we are going to freeze a couple programs here. That doesn't do us any good really. We've got to start reigning in the spending.”

Compared to the Ronald Reagan answer, this was more garbled and confused. But it matters not among equals for the applause continued, increasing to an almost frentic crescendo. Ms. Palin, unperturbed, seemed to gloat in the cheerleading moment.

Since God always seems to be a favorite topic of conversation in these pep-rallies, (God is always on the side of the dispossessed remember), she was asked a question about the spirit of America, and trust me, Ms. Palin didn't disappoint: “we should seek some divine intervention again in this country so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again. To have people involved in government who aren't afraid to go that route.”

I don't know about you, but I feel that there's an obvious lack of intellect, substance and coherence to the Sarah Palin phenomenum and I've never been one to be taken by her charm. It's all pre-fabricated, like a mass produced and dangerous talking doll.

Dare I say it: I don't think she's qualified for much except trying to change our public discourse with a baseless and irresponsible call to arms that does more harm to our democracy than not. And heaven knows, we're in need of some new blood pumped into the system and some new ideas infused into our public discourse. But she, like her paranoid ilk, just aren't it.

Sarah Palin for president in 2012? How can so many of us be so dumb?

Barack Obama's Nobel Prize Oslo Speech

By Jorge Reyes

President Barack Obama's Nobel Prize Speech in Oslo has been both hailed and criticized due to its seeming contradictory nature. I take a different view and feel that there is nothing contradictory about his speech, about his vision and plan for peace, nor about the tactics he and his administration are willing to take at a time when he has sent an additional 30,000 troops to war-torn Afghanistan.

The only critique I have is the timing. After all, as of the writing of this entry Obama has been in office for only nine months.

His speech, a fine lesson in history about the relationship between war and peace, action vs. inaction, understands the complexities of the world, the ambitious nature of some nation-states and the role the US should take in order to tackle international threats that affect us all.

Unlike Bush, Obama didn't said that there was an "axis of evil" that must be fought unilaterally increasing our presence and imperial power abroad; instead, Obama chose to elucidate his belief that evil was a real presence in the world and it must be fought by engaging in a two-step process: engagement and sanctions with rogue nations.

Certain members of the media have referred to the seeming contradictions between the man and his words; between the man and his presidential actions; between his rhetoric and pragmatism.  Some have even written that engagement and sanctions is a failure that hasn't worked in the past.  In fact, many nation-states such as North Korea are so isolated that engagement is sure to result in failure. At other times, regime change has proven to be almost impossible, short of war. And international sanctions has proven very difficult to enforce.

Critics have gone on to say that in other areas, Obama has done all the right talking but failed to bring about results-- from climate change to nuclear arms control, from Iran and North Korean's atomic ambitions to US sanctions in Sudan. Human rights violations continue to exist in many parts of the world. The Israelis and Palestinians are still deadlocked over a two-state solution. And not to be forgotten, many still remember how Obama ducked meeting with the Dalai Lama in order to avoid a conflict with China.

Rightfully so, the world is not any less dangerous than it was yesterday; it is not any more peaceful because of Obama's personal vision, leadership, or policies. But what the speech did highlight is that engagement with the world continues to be fraught with real dangers and peace as much as war are never mutually exclusive.

Of all the people who liked Obama's speech was Sarah Palin who told USA Today she particularly liked his references to just war and the fallen nature of mankind.

As I wrote, the only problem that I see with this prize is the obvious fact: Obama has been president for only nine months and already he's been hailed as a modern day Gandhi and Martin Luther King, both leaders whom he mentioned throughout his speech. Very little time has been given to test the effects of an Obama Policy which is still in its infancy. But in all honesty, I don't think that at this point the Nobel Prize will be judged so much by its effects as much as by Obama's commitment to the basic principles he read, and for that reason alone I don't think a better political leader could have been chosen.