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what you seem to miss, cimmaron, even in what you relay of your own friend's positions is that first the wiretapping business did not happen in isolation but as part and parcel of the central "policy" of the bush administration--the loopy "war on terror". your friends appear to have opposed the entirety of that fictional "war" (the effects of which were in many ways all too real)...obama has self-evidently changed the situation--he has broken up the logic, such as it was, of the bushwar--starting to actively wind down the iraq debacle, moving to close guantanomo, explicitly rejecting the bushjustifications for torture, rejecting the compulsion to secrecy that the bush people derived from their "war"...on and on. i happen to think that much of what the bush administration did can and should be understood as criminal--but the likelihood of any action is, sadly, slim to none. such is the nature of criminal action if you're el jeffe for a time.
it is a real problem for me and almost everyone i know that obama has chosen to retain other aspects of the bushwar---to act as if there is sense in continuing the conflict in afghanistan for example, to act as if there is sense in maintaining the wiretapping business.
what you demand of those of us who are not on the right is a simple-minded black/white stand. personally, i don't consider the right to be relevant at this point, so see no need to take seriously any attempt coming from the conservative to impose anything on debate. so you can in this case see things as you like, but there's no particular reason for anyone who is not already in the same political camp to agree with the terms you'd like to set for it.
at the same time, this breaking up of the bushwar logic at the level of policy as maybe put folk in a it of an awkward position--by separating the more outrageous and/or absurd aspects of the "war on terror" from others, the administration has broken up the old frame. i don't think you'll find *anyone* who identifies themselves as even a little on the left who supports what the obama administration has decided to do on wiretaps. just do a basic search and you'll get ample evidence of it.
the point i tried to make above was that it seems to me that retaining this element of the "war on terror" nonsense should be thought about in the context of the administration's initial moves to attempt to dismantle to old, outmoded national security state--and so as a tactical thing connected to what appears to be its alternate plan for military strategy--and by extension procurement--which has to do with less conventional war--which is at the same time a wholesale rejection of the rumsfeld doctrine.
but i still oppose it.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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