I'd just like to point something out to the many rightwingers who are frothing at the mouth today over the NYT's story that a former Gitmo detainee has become the deputy leader of Al Qaeda's Yemeni branch.

The Bush administration released this man in 2007, without trial -a decision made by political appointees, not judicial review - and handed him over to the Saudis who let him walk.

So who is at fault here?

Rather than blaming Obama for wanting to actually put bad guys on trial - proper trial - shouldn't these rightwing pundits be asking why the Bush administration made a political decision to let this guy go? Was there insufficient evidence? Was the evidence tainted by torture? Was he simply an innocent swept up by "arrest for bounty" tactics who became radicalized by his experience? What's the actual evidence for "suspecting" he has "returned" to terror?

Andrew Sullivan was kind enough to link to one of my old posts on this subject the other day in which I wrote:

Some very bad people are likely to walk free along with the innocent because the Bush administration tried to walk around domestic and international principles of law, creating an entirely spurious new designation of “unlawful combatant” so that they could either hide detainees from due process indefinitely or, failing that, conduct kangaroo courts.

If they’d just stuck with the existing definitions, all the Gitmo detainees against whom they could build a real case under the actual rules of law, without torture and without rigging the courts, would have been tried...already. If found guilty, the death penalty would have been warranted in some cases. I would personally have had no problem with that.

That's just the inevitable fallout from Bush's foolhardy actions. There's no real argument about it. But this instance is potentially even worse. If the Bush administration really thought this guy was dangerous and had real evidence to that effect, why did they make the political decision to turn him over to Bush's pals the Saudis instead of putting him on trial?

Crossposted from Newshoggers

[Erick Erickson of RedState: Image courtesy of Joeff Davis at Creative Loafing.]

Pauvre petite Erick. He doesn't have Sargent's mad skillz and is a little jealous.

Greg Sargent was with the left-wing Talking Points Memo. Now he is with the Washington Post.

I’m sure Greg Sargent is good at what he does, but I’m also sure the Washington Post would not even consider hiring someone directly from the right-of-center blogosphere.

The Wapo already has Krauthammer, Michael Gerson, Fred Hiatt, George Will, Novak, Richard Perle, Dana Milbank and a host of other conservatives writing for it. It doesn't need another.

But it should be noted that the WaPo also tried hiring a conservative blogger first - Ben Domenech of RedState. So much for Erickson's memory and the WaPo's not even considering a wingnut hire.

However, Domenech quit after 3 days because of allegations of plagiarism. Oh Dear. As Matt Y writes: "What the right lacks are people with the skill to do the job." Erickson just proved that with his fact-free rant.

Graphic from Hilary.Org

Russian President Dimitri Medvedev chose yesterday of all days to announce that Russia might deploy conventionally-armed short ranged missiles in the Baltic region if the US goes ahead with the Bush administration's planned ABM installations in Eastern Europe. Even though the Bush administration (still in power until January) and its neocon Wormtongues own the ABM boondoggle lock, stock and barrel and are clearly aiming it at Russia - and even though such military shifts are always planned months in advance - somehow today the Right are painting Russia's move as Obama's fault.

Medvedev, you see, mysteriously didn't congratulate Obama on his win in a speech which was scheduled weeks ago as the Russian leader's first "state of the union" address to his nation. Though why he should in such a speech is a mystery even the NY Times, which used the same ridiculous formulation, doesn't explain. The implication is that Medvedev is deliberately testing Obama to see if he has a spine. The truth is that Medvedev is rightly pissed with the Bush administration and Republican rule and Obama (perhaps because during the debates he repeated that dumb conservative talking point that Russia started the conflict in Georgia) is simply getting caught in the fallout.

Of the proposed deployments, Medvedev said:

“These are forced measures,” Mr. Medvedev said. “We have told our partners more than once that we want positive cooperation, we want to act together to combat common threats, that we want to act together. But they, unfortunately, don’t want to listen to us.”

That's all about the Bush/Cheney bluster and stonewalling - not Obama. He continued in the same vein:

Referring to the fighting in Georgia, he said: “The conflict in the Caucasus was used as a pretext for sending NATO warships to the Black Sea and then for the forceful foisting on Europe of America’s anti-missile system, which in its turn will entail retaliatory measures by Russia.”

The fighting in Georgia was “among other things, the result of the arrogant course of the U.S. administration which hates criticism and prefers unilateral decisions,” Medvedev said, according to news reports.

Which is, simply, true. Saakashvili wouldn't have sent his troops into South Ossetia to conduct atrocities if he didn't think Bush's America and NATO had his backs, and he thought that because Bush kept ignoring NATO allies who told him he was out on a limb about Georgia and his neocon pal McCain was whispering in his ear.

Somehow, all this translates into Russia testing the "Moonbat Messiah" instead of what it should be seen as - a situation where the US desperately needs to shake of the failed Republican method and try some old-fashioned diplomacy and sense for a change.

No honeymoon for Obama.