Santorum: Terrorists more dangerous than Hitler and Stalin, Soviet nukes.
Is it just me or is it kind of weird that the front page of CNN’s website has been completely given over since last night to ‘hey i’m a tough guy’ self-portraits of the Montreal college gunman? So far, I think we’ve had one with him with a knife, one with a gun and now one with him holding up his fist with a Dr. Evil grimace on his face.
Late Update: As of 1:41 PM, welve got another picture of the guy, now with him pointing his knife directly into the camera. I think it’s a knife. But it’s pointed directly into the camera. So I guess there’s a small chance it’s just a metal handle. I think this is picture number 5 from Kimveer Gill’s home website.
Later Update: New Kimveer Gill snuffshot at 2:12 PM. This one has Kimveer giving a heavy metal rock on sign with one hand and holding an automatic rifle in the other. Rock on!
So at least two former Chairman of the Joints Chiefs — Vessey and Powell — think the president’s proposal for Kangaroo Courts to try accused terrorists is wrong. Among the opinion set in Washington though, the proposal is still seen as tough and good politics. That’s the lay of the land.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water: Swift Boat 2.0.
Bob Perry, who bankrolled the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, ponies up five million for new group running attack ads against Democrats.
If you have a chance, flip on the White House briefing from Tony Snow. I guess it turns out Vessey and Powell just don’t understand what the White House is trying to do. They’re not trying to reinterpret/gut the 3rd article of the Geneva Conventions. They’re just trying to clarify ‘vague language’. Okay, I guess it was all just a misundersanding.
The Tony Snow press conference, going on now, is really a classic of our age. You should flip it on if you’re near a TV. It’s Tony Snow going back and forth with, I think, David Gregory, with Snow arguing that they’re not gutting article 3 of the Geneva Convention. It’s just no one has defined it before. It’s just no one has realized there was a problem over the last 59 years until the Bush White House realized we were all flying blind.
Weird.
Now at 2:43, it’s getting better. The problem hadn’t occurred to anyone before because, says Snow, the issue ‘hadn’t come up’ before. In other words, we hadn’t really been in the torture business until now. So there wasn’t as pressing a need to lawyer the Geneva Convention. Fascinating.
Bush: capturing bin Laden not a priority in War on Terror.
Following up on Tony Snow’s presser earlier this afternoon, as we noted, Snow argued that the White House doesn’t want to gut or reinterpret the minimum level anti-torture protections under Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. They just want to help clarify the vague language.
Check back to the article in the Washington Post that ran on August 9th, however, for some helpful perspective.
The Post spoke to Army Lt. Col. Geoffrey S. Corn, who until recently was chief of the war law branch of the Army’s Office of the Judge Advocate General.
Corn told the Post … “that Common Article 3 was, according to its written history, ‘left deliberately vague because efforts to define it would invariably lead to wrongdoers identifying ‘exceptions,’ and because the meaning was plain — treat people like humans and not animals or objects.'”
Did White House coerce JAGs into signing pro-torture letter to Congress?
You’ll want to see this video.