ibenez wrote:
] This is impossible. The Democrats firmly told me Bush was
] destroying the economy. How could this be? Others on this
] website (Memestreams) blame Bush for everything that goes
] wrong - if they were fair minded people I would expect to see
] a post praising Bush for our growing economy..... I mean, if
] you blame his Administration for everything that goes bad
] (Gitmo, Abu Gharib,etc) then you obviously need to give credit
] for everything that goes well right?

I'll bite. The administration is, in fact, responsible for the operation of Gitmo and Abu Gharib. The connect between events at Abu Gharib and Administration policy is weak at best. However, as they run the military they are the most obvious place to complain if there is a problem with how the military is running. They are responsible. Thats their job.

The primary concern about Gitmo is that it is not a pow camp, but existed, until a recent Supreme Court case (which imho Bush largely won, with some limit), in an unprecedented legal black hole in which there literally were no rules or checks and balances. This was intentionally done to avoid geneva convention rules on torture. The administration made the legal policy here. They are responsible for it. Several arguments have been advanced to defend this move, in the Gonzales Memo and the Administration's court filings, and they are all questionable.

1. The administration will eventually release or try these people: In the United States we have checks and balances. We don't blindly trust any division of government to simply do the right thing. We create a process that forces them to. Thats one key difference between a democracy and autocracy.

2. The geneva convention is "quaint:" I agree, but the right way to handle that is to update the standard rather then simply tossing it aside.

3. Terrorists don't follow the geneva convention: Should we be no better then them? The whole point of having things like the Geneva convention is to set an international standard for how soldiers ought to be treated when captured on a battle field. It is wise to uphold good standards even in the face of people who won't. Otherwise, the message you are sending is "do what thou wilt."

4. Other countries will treat our military with respect because of the reality of our actions with respect to treatment of POWs rather then the documented standards that we uphold. While there is some truth to this, other countries don't know how we treat our POW's unless there is a lot of light thrown on the matter. The controversy over Abu Gharib is exactly the reason that this is a bad idea. If you had an established policy for how you treat POWs and people, in general, understand what it is and trust you to uphold it, they are a hell of a lot less likely to be concerned that abuse stories might genuinly reflect how you are operating the prisons rather then just examples of bad apples. Its the complete absense of standards that creates the concern that stories like Newsweek's might be true and if true, might be officially sanctioned. If you don't make your position clear, people are left to guess. If people are left to guess, they may not guess in your favor.

All of this ties to a general disdain that the Administration seems to have with former standards of International law. These were standards that the United States mostly established, and there are many thoughful people even on his side of the fence who see his disregard for these things as somewhat reckless.

As for the economy, I'm glad to heard about these revised GDP numbers. There have been serveral posts on MemeStreams noting last month's job numbers. The administration can claim some credit here, but if no one is singing Bush's praises it is because there is little to sing about. While the economy appears to be improving, and this is certainly exciting news, this is one of the most anemic recoveries on record. At this state in a recovery the monthly job numbers should be much larger.

RE: March GDP revised upward from 3.1% to strong 3.5% / Officials attribute the upgrade mainly to slightly lower imports