Guantanamo Stats
 

my radical opinion is that for Bush this wasn't just about terrorism. It was about rewriting the powers of the presidency. If he could get away with throwing people in jail and throwing away the key without due process he could start doing that on American soil as well. Not much different than what third world dictators do, only scaled back a bit.

Absolutely. The point was never how many individuals were being subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques or whatever else. Nobody but the human rights activists really cares what happens to a seventeen year old from Bangladesh who likely had a shitty life either way.

The concern for Americans was (or should have been) that our government -- theoretically by the people for the people -- was using a fabricated security threat as an excuse to extend executive privilege without popular consent. It has been the defining characteristic of this administration.

Bull. While Bush has certainly been interested in restoring a strong executive, calling it the "defining characteristic" for Gitmo is exceptionally obtuse.

The Bush admin detained people they identified as threats to national security. We can dicker over the criteria, but securing the nation in a time of war was the objective. And it's truly hard to argue that it hasn't been effective, by any measuring stick available to us.

I didn't call anything the defining characteristic for Gitmo. Perhaps I'm not the obtuse one.

Tex, if you couple Guantanamo with the unPatriot Act, it would seem highly plausible to argue that Bush wanted to expand upon the power of the Executive without regard to the rights of citizens. At every step of the way, Bush has placed the power of the Executive over the interests of citizens in the name of security, which is by the way, the same sort of argument Putin and other despots always employ.

Bush has been horrible in the cause of civil liberties and IMHO, why he may deserve the moniker as the Nation's Single Worst President ever, right next to Jimmy Carter.

and Barack Obama?

He hasn't begun his legacy of shame, but given he cloisters with the media and hangs around well-lettered men and women, he'll escape even if he's mediocre.

Bush is a travesty, having almost single-handedly dismembered the Republican Party, having racked up the worst government spending, having engaged us needlessly in two wars without end, having stripped our citizens of civil liberties, having gone along with the Clinton Subprime market disaster, having played to the Religious Right, ....

He did appoint a few good justices in Alito and Roberts, and did hold the line on taxes, but that's about all.

He is a man worth hating, even though in person one might not loathe him.

Obama appears to be just an opportunistic panderer with no regard whom his policies injure. But he has not done anything and that's our prime hope, is that he's a big talker but does less than he advertises. Friendly supporters have assured me that my worst fears will not be realized because he won't want to become too unpopular. I hope you people are correct.

But presently, Bush will be known as the Great Mistake.

You agreed with BlueK's self-named radical proposition that Gitmo was created for the primary purpose of expanding executive power.

How many citizens are in Gitmo? For that matter, how many American citizens have been indefinitely detained at all?

Ridiculous hyperbole, for both Bush and Carter.

Who is worse than Bush and Carter?

But let's not take anything Bush said at face value. It was not created for the purpose of protecting the US, it was created to evade the protections of US law. It was a careful plan.

And he didn't do it to expand executive power, he did in disregard of whether it increased executive power and whether it abridged the civil liberties of the US.

In fact, his lawyers knew it was a problem and carefully sought to create plausible deniability, because Bush wanted to do, what he wanted to do.