MTP: Biden, Brooks, Maddow views on War on Terror

[scandal 951]

From the transcript of yesterday's Meet The Press. David Gregory interviewed Joe Biden, and discussed ####### Cheney's continuing allegations that the Obama Administration is not "tough enough" on terror. Afterward, the subject came up again in a panel discussion with David Brooks, Rachel Maddow. Interesting perspectives from all of these folks.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35367033/ns/me...e_press/page/3/

VICE PRES. BIDEN: Let me choose my words carefully here. ####### Cheney's a fine fellow. He's entitled to his own opinions. He's not entitled to rewrite history. He's not entitled to his own facts. The Christmas Day bomber was treated the exact way that he suggested that the shoe bomber was treated, absolutely the same way. Under the Bush administration, there were three trials in military courts. Two of those people are now walking the streets; they are free. There were 300 trials of so-called terrorists and those who had engaged in terror against the United States of America who are in federal prison and have not seen the light of day, prosecuted under the last administration. ####### Cheney's a fine fellow, but he is not entitled to rewrite history without it being challenged. I don't know where he has been. Where was he the last four years of the last administration?

MR. GREGORY: What about the general proposition that the president, according to former Vice President Cheney, doesn't consider America to be at war and is essentially soft on terrorism? What do you say about that?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: I don't think the vice--the former vice president, ####### Cheney, listens. The president of the United States said in the State of the Union, "We're at war with al-Qaeda." He stated this. And by the way, we're pursuing that war with a vigor like it's never been seen before. We've eliminated 12 of their top 20 people. We have taken out 100 of their associates. We are making--we've sent them underground. They are, in fact, not able to do anything remotely like they were in the past. They are on the run. I don't know where ####### Cheney has been. Look, it's one thing, again, to, to criticize; it's another thing to sort of rewrite history. What is he talking about?

.........

.........

MR. GREGORY: A lot to get to, all of you. David Brooks, the national security fight. You heard Vice President Biden taking on his predecessor. This is now a fully engaged argument about whether the Obama administration is sufficiently serious when it's taking on the war on terror. He said of Cheney, he's either "misinformation or misinforming."

MR. DAVID BROOKS: On the big picture he's right. I mean, if you cover the Obama administration, they take it seriously. The idea that they don't know we're at war, they don't pay attention, they have the daily intelligence briefs. They take this utterly seriously. So Cheney's large charge is completely bogus. As for the specifics, I think there are a couple of things he's right about. The KSM trial has become a total mess. What Joe Biden said today on the program doesn't pass the laugh test. The idea that we're going to try a guy, not acquit him, apparently, if, beforehand, are we going to make ####### Cheney the foreman of the jury? I mean, how do we know that? And then let him walk three. The second, free. And then the second thing I think Cheney's actually right about is Mirandizing. We, if we--say we'd captured the 9/11 guys on September 10th, or one of them, should we have read that guy his rights and given him a lawyer? No. We should have tried to get some intelligence out of the guy.

MR. GREGORY: Rachel?

MS. RACHEL MADDOW: There--there's--there isn't, in this case, and there hasn't been in any known modern terrorism case, any correlation between the usefulness of an interrogation and whether or not somebody gets read their Miranda rights. It just isn't the case. And in every single instance, every single terrorism case where there's been an arrest in this country in a terrorism case since 9/11, every single one has been handled--the person has been handled as a civilian criminal. There was a moment when Jose Padilla and, and Ali Amari were handed--handled in military custody. There's nothing magic about the time that they were in military custody. They didn't do any more magical forms of talking that they wouldn't do when they were civilians. So, even on those grounds, I think that, I, I think what you see as being correct in the, in the vice president's charges, I just, I just don't think it's there.

[Ali G. 37]

Unfortunately harsh liberal language does not work with terrorist, let alone preventing attacks. Israel is a country that thankfully learned this quick-smart.

Being that you are of Israeli background yet also a yank lib, where do you think Israel would be if they had America's PC, ACLU equiv, refusal to profile, refuse to proactively enforce the law (like monitoring communications), and US laws and rights (Constitution) to work by? I think we all know the answer to that, as it comes in the form of a mushroom cloud.

Unless America adopts a lot of Israel's proactive measures, we are inevitably going to suffer big time.

Edited February 15, 2010 by Booyah

[scandal 951]

Here are some more selected highlights of David Brooks from yesterday's MTP. I've said this before, but I feel compelled to say it again. I think David Brooks is the smartest and most savvy media guy in the Beltway. He is truly fair and balanced and spot on, where all the rest just pretend.

----

MR. GREGORY: ... a jobs bill. And there seemed to be bipartisan consensus on this and now Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled it back, made it a much narrower bill by $15 billion, mostly of tax breaks, to get people back to work. Is this going to go anywhere?

MR. BROOKS: It'll go somewhere. But if, if this was your week to hate Washington, this was a good week for you, because we got this bipartisan bill that emerged in the Senate filled with pork and all sorts of things that people hate. Fine. But at least the White House signs off on it. But Harry Reid decides after the White House has signed off on it that it's--the liberals in his party have objected. So we got the pork, and he decides, "I'm getting rid of the whole thing," or at least scaling it back to something about $15 billion a year. So then we get partisanship. And then on top of that, it's basically pointless. Fifteen billion dollars a year in a multitrillion-dollar economy is nothing, will create no jobs. So we had partisanship, pork, and pointlessness all in one bill. And so this was a bad week for Washington.

...

(regarding some squabbling between Reps. Ford (D) and Schock (R ) on the panel...)

MR. BROOKS: This conversation exemplifies what's wrong with Washington. It's like two guys fighting in the ocean to see who drowns first. I mean, the--it's--both parties are responsible for the, the deficits, and both parties are responsible for the fiscal suicide. And if you look at the polls that came out--a whole bunch of polls came out this week and they show both parties very negative. Unprecedented levels of distrust in Washington. Unprecedented, historically high levels of people want to get rid of their member of Congress from both parties. A level of distrust of Washington that is absolutely unprecedented in American history. And it's because the two sides are trying to fight each other than actually do something bipartisan or actually do anything.

MR. BROOKS: And so bipartisanship has become a wedge issue, a way to make the other party look bad. So bipartisanship has been twisted into just another partisan rant.

...

MR. GREGORY: ... something you wrote this week, that "voters are in no mood for a wave of domestic transformation."

MR. BROOKS: I don't think so. I think, you know, we had a period between 1932 and '64 where people basically trusted their government. And that ended because of Vietnam and Watergate and a lot of other reasons. When the president came in, it was not like '32 and '64. People had this incredibly high level of distrust. And if they had this economic security and you come at them with an institution they distrust with a whole bunch of change, they're going to have even more insecurity. They're going to recoil. I think that's what's happened. I think the president would have been wiser to go step by step to rebuild that trust in government. I still think that's what you should do today.

...

MR. BROOKS: Well, it's going to be a good year for Republicans. I'm actually beginning to think, for the first time in my life, there's a prospect for a third party at some point in the future. I just don't see how we get out of the fiscal hole if Republicans are not willing to raise taxes, Democrats not willing to cut spending. I just don't see how we get out of that, and that is the predicate. For the first time in my life I've thought maybe somebody could run a their party for president, not for Congress this year.

MR. GREGORY: Modern day Ross Perot.

MR. BROOKS: Hopefully a little saner, but, yeah.

[Ali G. 37]

I think the president would have been wiser to go step by step to rebuild that trust in government

There is the problem right there.

Why does everything fall on the president's shoulders? After all, this is not the parliamentary system, the president is one of three here.

[Danno 1,228]

Unfortunately harsh liberal language does not work with terrorist, let alone preventing attacks. Israel is a country that thankfully learned this quick-smart.

Being that you are of Israeli background yet also a yank lib, where do you think Israel would be if they had America's PC, ACLU equiv, refusal to profile, refuse to proactively enforce the law (like monitoring communications), and US laws and rights (Constitution) to work by? I think we all know the answer to that, as it comes in the form of a mushroom cloud.

Unless America adopts a lot of Israel's proactive measures, we are inevitably going to suffer big time.

Actually Israel does a number of things I think the USA try.