Thursday, November 11, 2004
Joe Biden, on the Geneva Convention:
"There's a reason why we sign these treaties: To protect my son in the military. That's why we have these treaties -- so when Americans are captured, They Are Not Tortured."
Alberto Gonzalez, on the Geneva Convention:
"The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians...In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
Joe Biden on Alberto Gonzalez:
"I think he's a pretty solid guy...If you had said to me six months ago I can have Gonzales or Ashcroft, it wouldn't have been a hard choice."
I will, however, leave you with this bit of advice about the future of the Democratic Party: if Republican submitted a bill called the "Democrats Eat Babys" Act of 2005, and the Democratic Party resubmitted the same bill with the word "babies" spelled correctly, the Dems would get attacked for being obstructionists and trying to co-opt the Republican agenda.
The major thing keeping the Democratic Party from developing a spine and a coherent platform of its own is that those in charge are too afraid of the counterattack from Republicans. This, I think, is the major psychological hurdle that Democrats face - and one that Republicans haven't worried about in decades.
