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'The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it,' Mr. Obama said in a statement issued in Hawaii, where he is on vacation. 'I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.'
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I don't think that saying you disapprove of something cuts you any slack when just a few minutes later you sign it into law anyway. This is just as bad as the people on Youtube who say "I don't own the rights to this video" and think it exempts them from copyright infringement.
"The president, for example, said that he would never authorize the indefinite military detention of American citizens, because “doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation.”"
While I support Obama, it doesn't feel correct to sign a bill and to fix it later(maybe). Especially since that bill can be used for such awful things, like the ones cited above...
Also, it's kinda ridiculous, after saying a few months back, that he wouldn't sign it.
How can a President sign a bill that is clearly anti-Constitutional (in this case, the Fifth Amendment) into law? Don't they even bother reading what they're signing anymore?
Maybe the HN community should just start campaigning for Ron Paul. Who knows whats next, have a startup, get foreign investor, go to jail forever?
Thats a mischaracterization of what AUMF did. Also, he believed the intelligence coming out of the Department of Defense that Iraq had something to do with 9/11...
Which we now know is false, Bush lied, and Saddam was terrified of the al-Qaeda assassinating him and taking over Iraq and had never funded them or associated with them, and the hijackers were almost all Iranians and Saudi Arabians.
Ron Paul has voted against the illegal and immoral war effort since then.
Edit: BTW, if you're implying Ron Paul voted for wire tapping and Guantanamo permanent detention and torture, the Bush administration tried to site AUMF for permission for both of those, and was shot down twice. They were in the wrong both times. Ron Paul did not support any such activities.
AUMF was signed into law on September 18th, 7 days after 9/11. I don't think anyone was expecting Bush to have lied out his ass the way he did, especially after the worst attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor.
Bush used this opportunity to finish what his father started, and it cost lives, money, and for the most part, the American way.
Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I recall that it was by then already quite clear that al Qaeda was behind the attack, and that al Qaeda and Iraq were far from friendly.
Bush tried to make it sound like Saddam hired the al Qaeda, that they were some sort of mercenaries for hire. If anything, they were murdering drug and crime lords for violating the Muslim ethics code, which makes them sort of anti-hero (and yes, I feel icky saying that). They wanted Saddam for the reason that he was torturing Muslims to death for fun.
I'm completely for Saddam being dead, but the American people deserve better than to be lied to, and so does Ron Paul.
Bush may well have tried to make it sound like that (although I don't recall that coming up until the runup to the invasion), but it was still clear that Iraq and AQ were not buddies despite what may have been said otherwise.
I don't think that saying you disapprove of something cuts you any slack when just a few minutes later you sign it into law anyway. This is just as bad as the people on Youtube who say "I don't own the rights to this video" and think it exempts them from copyright infringement.