Another One Bites The Dust

[drewkitty]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2157093,00.html

First Rove, and now Gonzales.

Two men who desperately need Christmas gifts consisting of full Presidential pardons.

That still won't give them the ability to travel to Europe.

Comments

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

After they leave office, they are no longer high-ranking American officials.

As for the POWs, we knew some of them were alive and made a decision to write them off.

You seem to think that American soldiers are disposable and former American officials are not.

In fact it's the other way around. Otherwise Carter would never have been permitted to negotiate in Haiti.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

After they leave office, they are no longer high-ranking American officials.

This is true. However, those who are currently high-ranking American officials would still be impelled to punish their kidnappers, because the same thing might happen to themselves after THEY leave office. You are assuming that "high-ranking American officials" are imbeciles incapable of seeing their own long-term self-interest.

As for the POWs, we knew some of them were alive and made a decision to write them off.

That is a controversial claim. Furthermore, even if true there was little public evidence of this, so the US government could pretend not to believe it to be the case. The same option would not exist if the EU took former US officials hostage: the "arrests," "trials" and "convictions" would be public and the subject of 24-hour news coverage. If the current US officials did not respond harshly, they might as well be hanging "kidnap me once I'm out of my post" signs on themselves.

You seem to think that American soldiers are disposable and former American officials are not.

No, but I suspect that American officials see things that way.

In fact it's the other way around. Otherwise Carter would never have been permitted to negotiate in Haiti.

Carter was not taken hostage. And the point behind sending him was that, as an ex-President, he was someone against whose captors America would have been honor-bound to go to immediate war against.

In other words, the reason they sent Carter was precisely BECAUSE America would obviously not tolerate his being made hostage -- and the Haitian junta knew this.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

Thank you. You have proved that you are capable of using logic. This entire argument was set up to provoke you to do so, if you were so capable.

For what passes for the record, I'm certain that any European nation that chose to seize an ex-American official on whatever pretext would think long and hard before doing so.