Senior GOP Comes Out Swinging In Defense Of…President Obama.

After Rand Paul concluded his dramatic and fact-free filibuster, his more experienced colleagues stepped onto the Senate floor to set the record straight.

http%3A//www.addictinginfo.org/2013/03/08/senior-gop-comes-out-swinging-in-defense-of-president-obama/



• McCain has moments of reason.

• This happened only because Obama is finally talking to them.

• No, R1. Rand was right on this. Drones are wrong.

• Yes , there is merit to the topic of drone usage. It is worth open discussion. Let's not forget that drones are the bastard children of the Patriot Act - brought to you by the Bush Administration and the GOP warmongers in the post 9/11 hysteria. We as a society are almost all guilty of silently approving this.

• What a surprise that a Republican defends Obama when it comes to killing brown people.

• And the Democrats gave Bush a blank cheque too, R4

• The point…there is absolutely zero difference in POLICY in use of a drone than use of any one of the other, many military assets from the past 100 years. The reason it is not done is because it is against the Constitution, against every military doctrine in US military history, and against the many laws in place that keep military assets from civilian use.

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• A drone is no different than any other weapon except that it targets better.

• It is against the Constitution and human decency to use drones. People in this country are too into treating politics like a football team, but don't notice there is no difference between teams.

• Exactly what in the Constitution preclude the use of drones? How is it different than a missile?

• The problem with drones is that they are more evidence of the encroaching power of the military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned us about.

• I think drones are "right" and the future of warfare. Get used to it.

• Are we pretending this is surprising? Of course McCain and Graham share Obama's position on this - they're most salient feature is their hawkish foreign policy. Just because you have a 2-party system in the US doesnt mean that everything is black and white.

• How do you get the GOP leadership to agree with Obama? Have a libertarian start attacking the military industrial complex.

• How would Obama answer this question: "Is it all right for other countries to kill people in the United States with their drones? If not, why not?" R10: See Article 1, Section 8. That should cover drones and missiles, but the presidents of both parties have made it a dead letter. Both parties in Congress hasn't done any better by refusing to cut off funding when Congress hasn't declared war, and the president is conducting one. R8: If it is more accurate, then that doesn't make U.S. policy better, it makes it horrendous. Drones are used as a surprise weapon. Drones have killed hundreds of bystanders, men, women, and children. Are you saying that excellent accuracy is better because we can take out more ordinary people at celebrations of life? If soldiers are killing people they are confronting, presumably it is a war zone, and civilians are on alert. How can that be the situation with drones? Or is it OK because the people who have died are not white Christians? Regular people all over Afghanistan civilians, families, children, priests, are trying to do regular things, have a picnic, go to religious services, visit friends, and go to school are terrified to go outside. Is this how we build U.S. support in the countries whose resources we want to control? "By now, Afghans (and Pakistanis in tribal areas across the border) surely know the rules of the road of the American war: there is no sanctity in public or private rites. While funerals have been hit repeatedly and at least one baby-naming ceremony was taken out as well, weddings have been the rites of choice for obliteration for reasons the U.S. Air Force has, as far as we know, never taken a moment to consider, no less explain. This website counted five weddings blown away (one in Iraq and four in Afghanistan) by mid-2008, and another from that year not reported until 2009. The latest incident is at least the seventh that has managed, however modestly, to make the news here, but there is no way of knowing what other damage to wedding parties in rural Afghanistan has gone uncounted." -- One reason we got for supporting Obama was that he needed progressives in Congress. Have they spoken up about drones? "It's a good thing Obama got re-elected. otherwise the progressives would have to start protesting the war again."

  http://wemeantwell.com/blog/2012/06/18/us-drone-policy-and-wedding-day-massacres/