Thursday, February 22, 2007

Campos besmacks Putz around.

Paul Campos has responded to Putz's unhinged rebuttal over at Glenn Greenwald's.

Two words: Beat. Down.

Some of the juicier highlights (go to Salon, get a day pass and Read The Whole Thing).
First, Reynolds argues there are circumstances under which government-sponsored assassination is both legal and morally defensible. Yet whatever merits that general claim might have, it has nothing to do with the legality and mortality of Reynolds’ specific recommendation that the United States government should be “quietly” assassinating Iranian mullahs and atomic scientists, today if not sooner. Obviously there is a world of difference between speculating on whether it would have made sense to assassinate, say, Saddam Hussein, or the Iranian head of state (presumably at some time when we weren’t funneling arms to them), and advocating the assassination of civilian research scientists.
This is a distinction I pointed out earlier, but I'm pretty sure it's lost on Putz. Scientists, terrorists. Whatever.
As for Reynolds’ claim that killing scientists wouldn’t be murder because it’s only against the law until the law is changed, what can one say?... It’s shocking that a professor of law would dare make such a despicable argument in print. In fact assassinations are currently prohibited by U.S. law – something Reynolds cannot of course dispute – and the law would have to be changed before what Reynolds says our government should be doing at the present moment could even arguably begin to be considered legal.
Campos is very unserious and clearly doesn't understand that Everything Changed on 9/11.

But my favorite part:
The United States isn’t at war with Iran, and the Iranian regime has never threatened to use nuclear weapons against our nation. My column emphasized these points, and in doing so essentially called Reynolds a liar. Yet he hasn’t even bothered to try to refute that charge – for the simple reason that he can’t.
Nope. The only people who claim we are at war with Iran, and have always been since 1979, are the same flavor of nutbar that gets their news from Putz and Pajamas Media.

Game. Set. Match.

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