Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on April 21, 2009

By Vicki McClure Davidson * Frugal Café Blog Zone

My son has played baseball for years, both in Little League and in all grades of school. He’s very good at it, is a loyal team player, and truly loves the game. He’s currently playing Junior Varsity at his high school. No matter how often he thinks about ditching the daily practices, he still goes. And that is because the team’s primary goal is important, always an imperative to him, the main reason he plays: Be the best you can be to win the game.

Win the game. How American a concept is that?

For a few years, my son played catcher. He and the pitcher developed complicated secret finger/hand signals to communicate silently with each other across the diamond. If hand signals weren’t enough to convey a message, my son would jog to the mound and quietly discuss his ideas for strategy with the pitcher, always being careful to block his mouth with his baseball mitt, just in case the opposing team could read lips. I always thought that was funny. Like there were “baseball spies” out there, hoping to learn a stray snippet of a strategy to get an edge? Apparently, there WERE indeed baseball spies… wow, who’d've thought? So, my son’s concern to be careful with team information was valid and serious: NEVER let the other team know what you’re planning to do. NEVER give them your secrets.

My son is much better at keeping his team’s secrets from opposing baseball teams than our POTUS and his minions are at keeping our nation’s interrogation secrets from our enemies.

It’s frightening that in Pres. Obama’s desire to be loved by third-world dictators, he’s achieved a new level of betrayal for the American people who voted for him. That of foolishly showing our hand to those who want Americans blasted off the face of the earth. And punishing those who worked tirelessly to keep America safe.

From Associated Press:

Obama earlier Tuesday had taken a question on this for the first time since he ordered Justice to release top-secret Bush-era memos that gave the government’s first full accounting of the CIA’s use of waterboarding – a form of simulated drowning – and other harsh methods criticized as torture. The previously classified memos were released Thursday, over the objections of many in the intelligence community. CIA Director Leon Panetta had pressed for heavier censorship when they were released, but the memos were put out with only light redactions.

Less than a week after declaring it was time for the nation to move on rather than “laying blame for the past,” Obama found himself describing what might be done next to investigate what he called the loss of “our moral bearings.”

The vexing issue of how terrorism-era detainees held by the United States were interrogated has presented Obama with a quandary, both political and pragmatic. He harshly criticized these practices as the campaigning Democratic presidential candidate, and still feels pressure from his party’s liberal wing to come down hard on it, even after the fact. But he also is being criticized by Republicans, including people as high-ranking as former Vice President Dick Cheney, who say the Bush administration doesn’t get enough credit for protecting the country from a second 9/11-style attack.

Worsening Obama’s dilemma: Now that he is president, he has to worry even more about the fallout of a release of government interrogation memoranda since he now oversees the entire national security establishment, including the spy apparatus.

This audacity doesn’t stop here. If only it did.

Here are two videos (parts 1 and 2) of Sean Hannity’s exclusive TV interview yesterday with former VP Dick Cheney. The interview, posted on YouTube, titled appropriately, “Hey Obama, Be Careful What You Wish For—Cheney Calls for Release of All Interrogation Memos” – was provided by AmericasNewsToday.Org.

Cheney Calls for Release of All CIA Interrogation Memos #1

Cheney Calls for Release of All CIA Interrogation Memos #2

Obama has done a 180-degree turn on what he said YESTERDAY, and over several weeks prior. That there’d be no prosecution or retaliation against anyone involved in interrogation tactics of bloodthirsty terrorists. TODAY, he is “open to it.” As in the prosecution of attorneys who wrote up the paper work. Yeah, forget that wacky stuff he promised yesterday. In Obama-land, there is only today.

Barack’s word is as dependable and solid as that of a four-year-old’s when caught with his hand in the forbidden cookie jar. “I won’t do it again, I promise, really-really promise.”

And he means it at that moment, but then later, he doesn’t mean it. No promise is too big to break, right? No effort to be a “man of his word.” Promises can be broken if he finds them too tedious or difficult to uphold. Obviously, the same thing with contracts (like the AIG bonus debacle). I’d be hard-pressed to have to put my life in his hands and depend on him to follow through on any promise to protect me as a US citizen… wait, as our elected POTUS, I have put my life in his hands, willingly or not.

And, so have you. Crikey, this is a depressing thought.

You know, I wouldn’t tolerate this narcissist liar in my every day life. A few of his flaky promise breakings and empty double-speak would be cause to not have him in the “inner friend circle.” Has nothing to do with his race or his politics. It’s his lack of substance, his ambiguous integrity.

As Obama went on his trashing-bashing of America in his “Magical Mystery Apology Tour,” he exposed all the things he doesn’t like about our country. He cowardly let Daniel Ortega bitch-slap our country for nearly an hour, only to have POTUS, worried that he might not be liked, say that no one could blame him for things that happened when he was a baby. Where was his outrage for the long-winded tirade against our great nation? The knee-jerk CYA of this man was weak and childish. It’s untrustworthy.

You know how in war movies there is always one sniveling, spineless guy that you know will cry and spill his guts about his platoon’s location if captured? That has no solid scruples or honor to protect his team, who would never willingly give his life to safeguard that of his fellow soldiers? A real wienie?

Yep, that wienie would be Obama.

What has Obama done, as it relates to my family’s safety and my nation’s security, that has outraged me the most this month (and April isn’t yet over)? Here are some of my national security concerns. Which was the worst? Gosh, was it:

Hugging and having a goofy frat-boy photo-op with that murderous Hugo Chavez, and then accepting Chavez’s mocking gift… a book slamming America? Reaching out to the loathsome Castro brothers and ignoring their decades-long oppression of Cubans? Slashing our national defense budget? Making bad deals with his new rogue-dictator buddies? Farting around with “approved language” like it really makes a difference in our nation’s safety, and then banning the use of terms like “War on terror”? Nominating a radical leftist who hates the military and isn’t too crazy about America to be the Pentagon’s security consultant? His shaky support of our ally Israel? His “will have UN look into it” vague mumbling about North Korea’s UN nose thumbing by shooting missiles over Japan? Creating his own military that is as well-funded and well-trained as our US military?

Which of these was worst or more stupid? How can you choose? All are despicable elements in the weakening of America.

Does no one see how dangerous this is? What in the hell has Obama done to strengthen our nation in our enemies’ eyes?

NOTHING.

What has he done to weaken us in their eyes?

PLENTY. And he’s not even been in office 100 days.

We are being sized up by those who wish our nation devastating harm, trust in that. This naive man repudiates one American institution after another, and he punishes what makes our society different and viable from the rest of the world. He is trying to make us into a tyrannical banana republic.

The powerful effectiveness of the interrogation techniques that were employed by the Bush administration and the information gained are being suppressed by the White House.

Obama, if you’re going to broadcast to our enemies what we have used as interrogation techniques in the past and what we will and will not do in the future to getting information out of scumbag killers, why are you holding back on the extensive data that shows the effectiveness of those techniques? How many American lives and lives abroad were saved as a result?

Stop stacking the damned deck, Obama. There is no transparency here. None. Your people want to keep picking at the “George W. Bush scab,” and that is the wrong course of action. And you know it is.

If you’re declassifying our most important, national secrets to the world (terrorists have access to newspapers and Internet, you do know that, right?), then everyone needs to know: DID THE TECHNIQUES WORK? We know that if these questioning techniques were failures, your people would have released the results in a New York minute. Guess they’re waiting for just the right moment to release them to the press (like 6 pm on a Friday) so that it gets buried.

I refuse to call anything we did under the Bush administration to these terrorists as “torture.” I don’t even consider waterboarding torture. Painful, scary, yes. Life endangering? No way.

Waterboarding was NOT used as a matter of course, only in the most dire of situations for important intel. No one at Gitmo has ever died from waterboarding. It is not TORTURE, for God’s sake, and interviewing a terrorist is not a Saturday night dance at the Elk’s Lodge.

And I’ve heard that Gitmo is rather luxurious, much nicer than my own home. So, being a captured terrorist definitely has its perks here, more so than in any other country. Wonder how plush those Iranian prisons are? Or those in China? Or Cuba?

In an episode during The Unit’s first season, the main characters go through the demanding SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training course. Everything we’ve done to extract critical information from murderous Islamic zealots who want to kill more Americans and other Western world citizens is no harsher than the training our elite soldiers go through with SERE courses. It’s a tough program, but only challenging for the strong; for the weak, it’s hell.

Terrorists can be whiny little babies when coddled by naive Democrats, and they don’t like to be interrogated, thank you very much. They would undoubtedly flunk SERE. If a Democrat was within earshot, they would whine and cry some more.

Despite being whiny little babies, they’re not so cute and cuddly when they are armed with bombs, automatic weapons, big-old-honkin’ knives that make beheading a foe a breeze, and potentially much worse. Not cute or cuddly at all. Because they don’t value human life. They believe that their one divine mission in this world is to DESTROY AMERICA.

Obama, you must start covering your lips with a baseball mitt. Stop blabbing. You’d make a terrible catcher on my son’s baseball team, helping the opposing team to win because of your big mouth and your weak-kneed, “I don’t want them to get mad at me” stance against the other teams. You need to pay better attention to my son’s philosophy and work ethic.

Be the best you can be to win the game.

Because, Mr. President, we do not want to lose this game. You might not care one way or the other, but American patriots do.

Worthwhile reading:
Michelle Malkin: Another day, another Obama flip-flop and Obama to “rebrand” enemy combatants and Gitmo gall: Charges dropped against Cole bombing jihadist
Ernie Mannix, Big Hollywood: The Ghost of John F. Kennedy
Protein Wisdom: Obama Administration Wants Judge to Toss Embassy Hostage Suit
Bob Maistros, North Star: Make Terrorists Choose Between Jumping or Burning: Now That Would Be Torture
Sister Toldjah: WH cutting back on the use of the word “torture”? (UPDATE: DOOR LEFT OPEN FOR PROSECUTING BUSH ADMIN OFFICIALS)
The Daily Gut: MONDAY’S GREGALOGUE: The Case for Punching Chavez in the Face
Jeffrey Jena, Big Hollywood: Obama Tortures Me Every Day
Hot Air: Obama flip-flops on potential torture prosecutions
Steven Crowder, Big Hollywood: Lonewolf Diaries: Time to Body Check Obama
Just One Minute: Torture Trials – Bring It On!
Pronk Palisades: The Big Obama Lie: CIA Enhanced Interrogation Techniques Do Not Get Results and Are Torture–Release the Memos Detailing The Results of The Interrogation!

Categories: Conservatism, Economy, Government, Knowledge, Media & Communication, National Security, Social and Political Climate
Tags: America, baseball, Bush, Castro, catcher, champion, Chavez, CIA, citizens, danger, Dick Cheney, dictator, dictators, finger signals, game, George W. Bush, hand signals, human rights, interrogation, Interrogation memos, Magical Mystery Apology Tour, Obama, oppresion, pitcher, POTUS, president, safety, Sean Hannity, secrets, security, socialism, socialist, terrorists, torture, waterboarding, White House