The Trail: A Daily Diary of Campaign 2008

the mccain myth and multi million pr spin to
make us believe we are all safer with a mentally vulnerable man on command of "national security" is a sad example of effective mass indoctrination lead by fanatic senator lieberman who is leading us with a smile to the war his friends have been plotting for so long regardless of our 'bleeding' economy..
A 'crazy' mentally impaired military man who seeks revenge from all terrible wounds he experienced in the past, is NOT the person to lead the US towards better times.
"The best is yet to come"? For whom exactly?
NOT for us, the people, senator!

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - The secrecy shrouding government files on terror suspects is bogging down the Pentagon's effort to hold trials at Guantanamo Bay, with defense attorneys accusing the government of withholding potential exculpatory evidence.

At pretrial hearings this week, attorneys for two al-Qaida suspects captured in Afghanistan said they need more access to interrogators, witnesses and records. Prosecutors objected, citing a need to protect the identities of U.S. service members and other security concerns.

The hearings did not resolve the disputes, which appear likely to further delay the launch of first U.S. war-crime tribunals since the World War II era. The first detainees were charged more than three years ago, but repeated legal challenges have kept any from going to trial.

"We're going to have to see how willing the judges are to interpret the rules so as to give defense counsel some kind of chance to actually defend their clients," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, a defense attorney for detainee Omar Khadr. "That means litigating these discovery issues and that takes time."

Trials are scheduled to begin this spring for Khadr, who is accused of hurling a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in 2002, and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden who allegedly also delivered weapons for al-Qaida.

They are minor figures compared with the 15 "high-value" detainees - including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - who are among those expected to face charges. Secrecy may be even a bigger issue in their trials.

The New York Times reported Saturday that military prosecutors are nearing the end of preparations for the "first sweeping case" against as many as six Guantanamo detainees suspected in the Sept. 11 plot - Mohammed likely among them.

The law authorizing the war-crimes tribunals allows the use of classified evidence, and prosecutors say they fulfill their obligation to share it with the other side. But some defense attorneys say the government uses too narrow an interpretation of what information is relevant and should be provided to the defense.

Classified evidence will likely play an increasingly central role as the government forges ahead with plans to prosecute about 80 of the roughly 275 men held at this isolated U.S. Navy base on suspicion of terrorism or links to the Taliban or al-Qaida.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said the government's decisions to classify evidence often reflect a need to protect U.S. forces still fighting in Afghanistan.

"The hearings this week demonstrated some of the complexities involved in a new type of war against a new type of enemy," he said, while expressing optimism. "On balance, we're making progress and moving forward."

In Hamdan's case, his attorneys asked the military judge to provide them access to government employees who interrogated Hamdan after his capture in November 2001. One of his attorneys, Charles Swift, said the defense wants to determine whether Hamdan made any statements through coercion.

Hamdan's defense team said they have been provided with only partial, incriminating portions of his interrogation transcripts - an accusation that prosecutors denied.

"Every statement that he has made we have provided," said Army Col. Larry Morris, the chief prosecutor for the military tribunals.

In Khadr's case, Kuebler said the government has refused to put defense lawyers in touch with several eyewitnesses to the 2002 firefight in Afghanistan which Khadr, who was then 15, allegedly hurled a grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer.

At one of the hearings this week, the government inadvertently released a witness account that raised doubt over whether Khadr threw the grenade. Prosecutors later said they had planned to hand out a redacted version, but Kuebler said he believed the government meant to keep the witness account from the public.

"There's no openness about this process," he said.

The military commissions, as the tribunals are called, convicted one detainee - David Hicks of Australia - but it was through a plea bargain before his trial even began.

John McCain got nominated because the Republican Party nomination process posits one candidate who will be the darling of about ten to fifteen per cent of the voting population of the country, and John figured out how to game it, with lots of unwilling help.

Because in a normal Presidential election less than half of the eventual voters come out for the primaries, and lots of hopefuls get in early to the process and stay too long, if the militant conservative rump of the party gets behind one candidate, they need only about thirty percent of the vote in each primary to leverage the party, since the states are winner take all and while thirty percent isn't near a majority, it is more than twenty five, twenty, fifteen, or ten, which add up to the remaining seventy percent, and tend to be the way the rest of the votes distribute themselves. (Note that that is thirty percent of half of the Republican half of the electorate. Say 8% of the the Voters, or perhaps five or six percent of the voting age Americans. It's called Leverage)

WHENEVER the radical right can get organized and get focussed, they can have the biggest plurality in any early primary, and gain "Momentum", which can be conflated with popularity.

This time around, EVERYBODY tried to go the route of carrying "THE BASE" and the only real centrist, Rudi Guilianni, got caught up in that tactic. Had he made a real run at the nomination, by writing off the rightmost 30%, he might have been where John is now. McCain has benefited by the presence of Thompson, Huckabee, and Romney all running to be president of the American Right, and Guiliani running to be in the wrong place none of the time.

Now John has an impossible task ahead of him. He must try to run to the center knowing that EVERY TIME HE DOES the Right will call him a traitor, and threaten to go vote for Ron Paul and the antiIRS party. So John will have to spend all his time mending fences with the right, while Hillary (presumptive, but better for the hypothesis) runs to carry the pragmatic center.

While it is true that lots of people hate her, they all vote Republican anyway, and would probably still vote Republican even if the Democrats were to nominate Bill Richardson or Evan Bayh. The only votes that Hillary would negatively impact would be the Republicans who would otherwise stay home rather than vote for McCain, and many of them will be voting for Paul, even if only as a write in.

While he is busy mending fences, His President will be busy reminding people that John is running as a Republican, and should he be elected, he will be naming the Gonzaleses, Mukaseys, Aschcrofts, and Rumsfields his party is loaded with to his administration, and those names, along with the war, the deficit, and the economy are problems that John wouldn't be able to credibly deal with even in a very good year.

The one salient statistic in the polls so far is that far more voters participate on the Democratic side than on the Republican side. Lay out the party by party totals, and set Hillary's and Barraks results beside them, and notice how many times either, or each, has out polled the entire republican party. Barrak Obama out polled the Republican Party all by himself in GEORGIA!!. Romney, and probably next week Huckabee bailed because by "Suspending Campaign Operations" in "The Interests of the Party" avoids having a record of getting roundly thumped in 2008, so he might have some cred left in 2012. Huckabee has the same consideration. Both can plausibly "Support" John in his landslide loss running for the Presidency while in fact trying to position themselves for the hoped for Conservative rebound they expect in 2012. Expect at best tepid fervor from all of the wannabees this time around, because the bigger the margin of defeat, the more they can run as the "PURIST CANDIDATE" that WOULD have won if he had been given the chance in 2008.

When Hillary gets her eight years, and Barrak has his ten years in the Senate, and an incredible understanding of every congressman with any clout at all, and uses it to get HIS eight years in the White House, two decrepit hasbeens, Mitt and Mike will share the dignitaries bench at the 2024 Republican Nominating convention, as some very liberal Republican accepts the nomination and tries to save the Republican Party from its final death rattle. The American Reform Candidate will eke out a win, and his inauguration will be the final dirge for the GOP.

I hope I will live long enough to not mourn its passage.

It ought to be noted that, in the states that have had both parties vote, if the parties hold their proportionate results in the general election, the Democrats pick up at least 36 electoral votes. That is assigning Michigan to the Republicans because they did get the most participants in their primary, although Michigan is probably still a blue state. If no other state were to change hands, that gives the Democrats the victory.

Will it turn out that the Conservatives have written off 2008, and John McCain in the process?