Quotes of the Morning: One Standard For You, One For Me

“A majority of members of Iraq's parliament have signed a draft bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels. The development was a sign of a growing division between Iraq's legislators and prime minister that mirrors the widening gulf between the Bush administration and its critics in Congress.
The draft bill proposes a timeline for a gradual departure, much like what some U.S. Democratic lawmakers have demanded, and would require the Iraqi government to secure parliament's approval before any further extensions of the U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, which expires at the end of 2007.”
-Washington Post, May 11, 2007

“Um.. Wow. Apparently the U.S. Congress isn’t the only group that wants to get our troops out of Iraq. Apparently the Iraqi government wants to get us out of there too.. That seems to be pretty clear.”
-Skippy

“RUSSERT: But if the duly elected people's bodies, the U.S Congress and the Iraqi Parliament, say they want a troop withdrawal, that's more than a poll. Isn't that the voice of the people?
MCCAIN: As far as the Iraqi Parliament is concerned, the Iraqi government obviously doesn't feel that way there … second of all, there is a certain amount of domestic political calculations involved there in what the Iraqi ‘Parliament’ said.”
-John McCain Interview on ‘Meet the Press’, May 14, 2007

“..unless you are John McCain, who apparently feels that the Iraqi Parliament (part of the ‘democracy’ that we’ve brought to Iraq) does not have a voice in the government. Apparently Iraq just doesn’t take the War on Terror as seriously as we do.”
-Skippy

“A recent case suggests that the war on terror has been superseded by the war on embarrassment
A man accused of blowing up an airliner and killing 73 people, who has already admitted to bombing hotels with fatal consequences and who has a conviction for a failed assassination attempt on a head of state, was freed on a technicality in a Texas court this week, and can look forward to a quiet retirement in Florida.
In London a man accused of hacking into the computer system of the Pentagon and Nasa is waiting to see if the House of Lords will hear his appeal against extradition to the US to face a trial in which one prosecutor has already indicated he should "fry". Blowing up an airliner is clearly regarded as less serious than causing major embarrassment to the defence establishment.”
-Guardian Unlimited (UK), May 12, 2007

“Huh? We let a terrorist go? Why would we do that?”
-Skippy

“Cuba accused the U.S. government on Friday of violating international anti-terrorism treaties by allowing Luis Posada Carriles, a man Havana accuses of violent acts against the country, to walk free of all charges after an immigration indictment against him was dropped.
‘The U.S. government has not only violated its own laws and supposed commitment to its self-proclaimed 'War Against Terrorism,' but also to its own international obligations,’ said a government declaration published Friday in the Communist Party newspaper Granma.
[…]
Havana accuses Posada of orchestrating a string of 1997 Havana hotel bombings, which killed an Italian tourist, and in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.
Venezuela is seeking to extradite Posada in the jetliner explosion, but a U.S. federal judge ruled that Posada cannot be sent there or to Cuba for fear he may be tortured.
Accusing the U.S. government of hypocrisy, the Cuban declaration noted that ‘meanwhile, it maintains a prison in part of the territory it occupies in Cuba in Guantanamo and maintains prisons in the length and breadth of the planet where the most aberrant and inhumane acts are committed.’
The Cuban government's statement said the U.S. could have continued to hold Posada under the U.S. Patriot Act, which was passed after the 2001 terror attacks on the United States, by simply declaring him a national security risk.”
-Associated Press, May 11, 2007

“Oh sweet irony. We apparently claimed that we could not send a terrorist to Cuba because he might be tortured.”
-Skippy

It was not until last September that President George W. Bush acknowledged the CIA use of secret prisons around the world. He said all 14 high-value terrorism suspects that the CIA had been holding, including a mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, had been transferred to military custody at Guantanamo Bay for trials.
Officials said Friday that al-Iraqi was captured well after that, but John Sifton of Human Rights Watch in New York said he was skeptical.
After Bush's announcement, ‘We thought there were others who remained in CIA custody or, if they weren't, they were temporarily being held in some sort of proxy custody by someone else,’ Sifton said.
His group says it has a list of 16 additional people who had been in CIA custody at some time and have not been accounted for.
The CIA has not commented on the list.
Soon after the capture of a major terror suspect in 2002, the CIA decided it should hold high-value captives for extended periods to extract information, using ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’
Those widely reported practices included openhanded slapping, cold, sleep deprivation and, perhaps most controversially, waterboarding. In that technique, a detainee is made to believe he is drowning.
‘The methods used in this program are thoroughly reviewed by our government to ensure that they are fully in accordance with our laws and treaty obligations,’ Gimigliano said.”
-Associated Press, April 27, 2007

“America.. We’re so rich that we can afford a second set of standards!”
-Skippy