Liz Cheney’s Al Qaeda 7
“Nine top political appointees at the Justice Department previously worked as lawyers or advocates for ‘enemy combatants’ confined at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prompting new questions from Congress and conservative critics about the integrity of the administration’s handling of detainees,” reports Richard A. Serrano of The Los Angeles Times. “One of the sharpest critics is a group called Keep America Safe, run in part by Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. It has derided the unidentified appointees as the ‘Al Qaeda 7,’ and in a video on its Web site Tuesday asked, ‘Whose values do they share?’ ”
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/liz-cheneys-al-qaeda-seven/
The Bush Administration is saying this video goes too far as does fox
Following the release of the Keep America Safe video, Fox News published a report revealing the identities of the seven Justice Department lawyers in question. The Justice Department confirmed the names, but DOJ spokesman Matt Miller told Fox it was “offensive that their patriotism is being questioned.”
Fox News reported that “an extensive review of court documents and media reports by Fox News suggests many of the seven lawyers in question played only minor or short-lived roles in advocating for detainees.” The report also noted that there were at least three lawyers in the Bush administration who had previously advocated for detainees.
The Justice Department reports that at least 34 of America’s 50 largest law firms have represented detainees or filed amicus briefs on their behalf.
When in 2007 a Pentagon official questioned the number of lawyers from top firms representing Guantanamo prisoners, then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended the practice, the Washington Independent points out.
“Good lawyers representing the detainees is the best way to ensure that justice is done in these cases,” Gonzales told The New York Times.
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/03/05/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry6269868.shtml
It could be worse than some of the assertions made by McCarthy, depending on some of the validity of those assertions,” Mirengoff said. “It is just baseless to suggest that [these DoJ officials] share al Qaeda values… they didn’t actually say it but I think it was a fair implication of what they were saying.”
(Mirengoff wrote after his comments were posted that “the quotes themselves are accurate, but I think the characterization of what I said is somewhat misleading,” writing “I don’t think I said or implied that the video is comparable to or worse than the totality of what goes by the name of McCarthyism or to the ‘crusades’ launched by Sen. McCarthy.”)
It was not the first time McCarthy had been raised in reference to the video. Ken Gude of the liberal Center for American Progress said the following, according to the Washington Monthly: “This is exactly what Joe McCarthy did. Not kind of like McCarthyism; this is exactly McCarthyism.”
“Joseph McCarthy himself couldn’t have done a better job of using fear and insinuations to smear his political enemies,” added People For the American Way President Michael Keegan. “Most Americans understand that McCarthyism was a shameful chapter in American history, but the Cheney wing of the Republican Party seems to have embraced Senator McCarthy’s utter lack of sham.”
This link actually have the video in question
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/03/05/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry6271081.shtml
I would love to see more conservatives than those who already have, and it seems there are boatloads, come out against this video. To it is this behavior that is doing more to undermine America and American values, in order to further a political agenda.
I suppose there may be some who agree, But I think most will find it disgusting