Marc Thiessen, King of the Morons UPDATE
By Larry Johnson on March 9, 2010 at 11:55 AM in Current Affairs
Marc Thiessen, former Bush speechwriter, is a dangerous man. Apart from his lunatic ravings and fantasies in his book, Courting Disaster, he has now weighed in on the fact that the Department of Justice is now employing lawyers who helped represent alleged Al Qaeda terrorists in Guantanamo. Obviously Thiessen brings the same ineptitude and ignorance to the issue of jurisprudence that he displays on the issue of terrorism and torture. Thiessen writes in the Washington Post:
Would most Americans want to know if the Justice Department had hired a bunch of mob lawyers and put them in charge of mob cases? Or a group of drug cartel lawyers and put them in charge of drug cases? Would they want their elected representatives to find out who these lawyers were, which mob bosses and drug lords they had worked for, and what roles they were now playing at the Justice Department? Of course they would — and rightly so.
Yet Attorney General Eric Holder hired former al-Qaeda lawyers to serve in the Justice Department and resisted providing Congress this basic information. In November, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Holder a letter requesting that he identify officials who represented terrorists or worked for organizations advocating on their behalf, the cases and projects they worked on before coming to the Justice Department, the cases and projects they’ve worked on since joining the administration, and a list of officials who have recused themselves because of prior work on behalf of terrorist detainees.
No wonder Bush sounded like a fucking moron at times. He had Thiessen as a speechwriter.
In fact, I am willing to bet that Bush on his on would have come off as quite intelligent had he gone with his gut instead of relying on a dope like Thiessen.
Marc, for starters the big difference is that THE MOB PAYS THE MOB LAWYERS AND THE DRUG CARTELS PAY THE DRUG LAWYERS but, and this is a very critical but, AL QAEDA DID NOT AND HAS NOT PAID FOR A SINGLE LAWYER.
Got some startling news for you Marc, lawyers don’t take clients because they are innocent. Sometimes lawyers actually defend people who are guilty. It is called the American system of justice. We start with the presumption of innocence. If you want a legal system that assumes at the outset that the defendant is guilty then you should get your ass to Russia or China asap. You (and I) would be so much happier if you were in a country that celebrates authoritarianism and the right of the state to declare anyone a terrorist without having to prove their claim.
See, America sucks ass because we have this quaint idea that the individual, not the Government, is supreme and that the power of the government, especially the Federal Government, ought to be checked and limited. That’s why lawyers got involved with the question of whether or not a President, not just a Republican President, could grab people, declare them terrorists and hold them indefinitely.
Thiessen goes on to whine:
Where was the moral outrage when fine lawyers like John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Jim Haynes, Steve Bradbury and others came under vicious personal attack? Their critics did not demand simple transparency; they demanded heads. They called these individuals “war criminals” and sought to have them fired, disbarred, impeached and even jailed. Where were the defenders of the “al-Qaeda seven” when a Spanish judge tried to indict the “Bush six”? Philippe Sands, author of the “Torture Team,” crowed: “This is the end of these people’s professional reputations!” I don’t recall anyone accusing him of “shameful” personal attacks.
The standard today seems to be that you can say or do anything when it comes to the Bush lawyers who defended America against the terrorists. But if you publish an Internet ad or ask legitimate questions about Obama administration lawyers who defended America’s terrorist enemies, you are engaged in a McCarthyite witch hunt.
Thiessen, you retard, the reason that your list of so-called fine lawyers were attacked is because they violated the very tenets of law that the Constitution enshrines. What the hell has happened to genuine conservatives? There was a time that conservatives believed first and foremost in the rule of law, limited power of the Federal Government and fiscal responsibility. You and your former boss, W, blew those concepts all to hell. Me? I continue to believe firmly and passionately that the power of the Federal Government should and must be limited. I do not believe in a theocratic form of government. The President is not a divine being nor is he (or she) infallible. Yet you persist with this fascistic nonsense to assert that our Government, using fear, can usurp the rights of any individual that it decides on its own is a terrorist or an enemy.
Unlike you I have learned the lessons of Nuremberg. Unlike you I remember and understand the historical precedent of governments run by dictators and thugs–Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. While George Bush is not a criminal on par with those scum, he still engaged in practices that, no matter how noble his intention, presented a direct threat to our system of government and the principle that the government is limited in what it can do to individuals.
There is a part of me that secretly hopes that Barack Obama begins to do exactly what George Bush did. Only this time, following a terrorist attack by a group linked to Tea Party folks, he goes after conservatives who are speaking out against his government. Only then will you understand the slippery slope you are on and only then will you begin to appreciate that our system of government is not and should not hinge on whether the President is a “good guy” or “well intentioned.” Moreover, sovereign has the right to unilaterally declare a person guilty or to imprison them at will without limit. That is not America.
Our system holds that “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” That’s a concept you ought to explore.
UPDATE: I wanted to respond specifically to the assertion from “NO LONGER BANNED IN BEANTOWN.” I have no problem with legislative oversight and seeking an answer to the question, “Are lawyers who represented clients at Guantanamo now setting policy on the issue at DOJ?” That is a legitimate question. Under judicial ethics a lawyer who had a material interest in a case while in the private sector must recuse himself or herself from working on that case if they hold a government job.
But that’s not what is going on here. Thiessen would not have been a moron if he had simply made the case of asking the question or offering evidence that these lawyers were involved in a conflict of interest. Instead, Thiessen and the other fascists, like Liz Cheney, proceed with the smear of guilt by association. There is no evidence that the lawyers now in the Department of Justice who worked on the cases of the Guantanamo prisoners have engaged in a conflict of interest. That is why I think Thiessen is a person without honor or integrity and why BANNED IN BEANTOWN is off the mark.
by Ronald Scott
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