Obama Toasts Queen Over Anthem

[ilvtofu]

YouTube

Haha *awkward*

[Hurricane]

So high centering his limo in Ireland wasn't enough, he had to completely flub a cheers over the English anthem while standing next to the Queen herself...whats next?

That was painful to watch. Particularly the moment after the Queen refused his cheers and he slowly started coming to terms with what was going on.

It's about time he started acting like a typical American president. I think its more representative than his usual polished considerate self.

[Fafine]

lol you can actually hear her say "set it down" LOL

[zulutango]

He also screwed up his signature in the guestbook at westminster Abbey...signed "2008", not 2011. If this had have been Bush the media would have been all over him. I guess frying over those "57 US States" on the way here makes him tired?

[Gumby]

I don't think it's entirely his fault - Obama says "To her majesty, the Queen..." and someone started playing the anthem, not knowing that he had more to add.

[zulutango]

I guess all that world-class experience he got as a"community organizer" and constitutional law "teacher" was not quite enough.

[Great68]

Obama has a fuckload more power than the queen, she should be toasting him.

[Meowjin]

Originally Posted by zulutango

I guess all that world-class experience he got as a"community organizer" and constitutional law "teacher" was not quite enough.

your canadian... why do you give that much of a shit?

[midnight_r]

wow so akward Obama 0 Queen 2

[Ferra]

no idea how these formalities work....
why did the anthem started playing in the middle of his toast???

[jplus]

Originally Posted by Ferra

no idea how these formalities work....
why did the anthem started playing in the middle of his toast???

The band thought Obama was done talking.

Most people with common sense would just STFU and don't talk over "God Save the Queen" when the Queen herself is present.

[parm104]

LOL! At first it almost sounded like she said "That's very kind.."

[TheKingdom2000]

[zulutango]

Originally Posted by Ferra

no idea how these formalities work....
why did the anthem started playing in the middle of his toast???

It was the other way around...he started talking in the middle of the anthem. His protocol people should have told him that....but then, after his vast ( or is it "half-vast"?) experience as a community organizer, he should have known that. They don't use telepromptors in England and every time he stops reading and starts talking he gets into trouble. This is just the latest episode.

I just googled this...

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread362120/pg1

[tool001]

seriously, i wonder sometimes, why the fuck the world gives so much damn about the queen and british monarchy. what good has it done for canada, and for the rest of the world for that matter.

[Bouncing Bettys]

Originally Posted by tool001

seriously, i wonder sometimes, why the fuck the world gives so much damn about the queen and british monarchy. what good has it done for canada, and for the rest of the world for that matter.

This isn't directed at you tool001 but I'd say about as much good as whining about Obama being president using a failed argument from the 2008 election race like his inexperience. I wonder what Bin Laden thinks of his inexperience.

[zulutango]

I guess Obama is lucky that Bush's waterboarding ( which Obama was against, along with the info he got from Gitmo prisoners, that he said he was going to close//) got him Osama's postal code.

[Bouncing Bettys]

Originally Posted by zulutango

I guess Obama is lucky that Bush's waterboarding ( which Obama was against, along with the info he got from Gitmo prisoners, that he said he was going to close//) got him Osama's postal code.

really?
Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan Does Not Credit Waterboarding for Leads: Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” whether waterboarding was used to get details that led to the Al Qaeda leader, Brennan said, “not to my knowledge.” “There was no one critical bit of information provided by either a detainee or somebody else,” he said. “What happened is there was a mosaic appearing over time and by diligent work and very strong work we pieced it together and it brought us to Abbottabad.”
“A number of leads have been pursued over the years. I think what this operation demonstrates is that there are some very, very good people who have been following bin Laden for many, many years. They have been very persistent. They have pulled on every thread. And as a result of that diligence and their analytic capabilities, they were able to track this and continue to build a body of evidence that suggested, circumstantially, that bin Laden was at that compound. That’s what they did.”

Mike Hayden, Former CIA Director Got No Intel From Waterboarding: “I’m willing to concede the point that no one gave us valuable or actionable intelligence while they were, for example, being waterboarded.”

Mark Fallon, a former interrogator and special agent in charge of the criminal investigation task force at Guantanamo Bay: “I was privy to the information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at the time. I’m not aware of any information or intelligence that was a product from water boarding. If we look at the facts we know of the case right now where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was a mentor, this was a protégé of him. Had the information come out during the water boarding, we would have captured the courier sooner… I’ve seen no information that the infliction of pain equates to the elicitation of accurate information… it’s a shame to diminish the incredible work that went on through the intelligence community with analysts and case officers that led to bin Laden’s capture. So let’s not diminish that accomplishment because that’s a significant event in our history. To try to cheapen it by saying that some event in water boarding years ago led to this is a disservice to our service members.”

Shall I continue?

In the grand scheme of things, where the Monarchy continues to become insignificant, Obama's gaff means nothing. Go back to watching Fox News and wait for the next thing they tell you to be upset at Obama for.

[zulutango]

Shall I continue...? Really?...



The killing of Osama bin Laden was a great victory for the U.S. intelligence community, but it may well be the last one because of the Obama administration’s refusal to use tough tactics such as waterboarding on terror suspects, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey warns.

The information that led U.S. agents to bin Laden could not have been obtained without stringent interrogation methods, Mukasey writes in The Wall Street Journal.


Michael Mukasey: Obama administration demoralizes intelligence personnel. “Consider how the intelligence that led to bin Laden came to hand. It began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [KSM], who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information — including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden,” writes Mukasey, who was the nation’s top law enforcement officer under President George W. Bush from 2007 to 2009.

The Obama administration prevents intelligence officers from doing their work to the best of their ability, he said.

“Policies put in place by the very administration that presided over this splendid success promise fewer such successes in the future. Those policies make it unlikely that we'll be able to get information from those whose identities are disclosed by the material seized from bin Laden. The administration also hounds our intelligence gatherers in ways that can only demoralize them,” he said in the opinion piece published Friday.

Practices such as waterboarding, in which a suspect’s head is held underwater until he believes he is drowning, are used only in extreme cases in which agents know the prisoners have vital information, Mukasey said.

“The harsh techniques themselves were used selectively against only a small number of hard-core prisoners who successfully resisted other forms of interrogation, and then only with the explicit authorization of the director of the CIA. Of the thousands of unlawful combatants captured by the U.S., fewer than 100 were detained and questioned in the CIA program. Of those, fewer than one-third were subjected to any of these techniques,” he said.

Mukasey quoted former CIA Director Michael Hayden as saying that, “as late as 2006, even with the growing success of other intelligence tools, fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of [al-Qaida] came from those interrogations.”


If you wish to go back to watching MSNBC or listen to Obama's folks who couldn't even get the story right about what happened in the raid, in spite of watching the video of what happened, then that is your choice...and you can wait until the next thing they tell you to be upset at Bush for.

In the real world, Obama's gaffe means a lot and just reinforces his lack of experience...but then maybe I'm being too tough on him, after all he got the Nobel Peace Prize for nothing that he had actually accomplished, but what they felt that he might do in the future. I Just hope for the sake of the US he doesn't fall flat on his face at another Olympic Games application party. Maybe he shouldn't have use that as a warm-up for his meet the Queen visit? At least this time he didn't return a bust of Churchill to her and give her a set of DVD's of his speeches, that were not PAL.

[tr0ubl3s0m3x]

That was awkward as fuck, but maybe if the queen wasn't so self absorbed, she'd signal Obama to hold on when the music started. In a few generations, the monarchy will be nothing more than history. I personally couldn't give a less of a fuck about the monarch. Waste of tax payer's money. What have they done for us recently? Don't talk about the past because that's the past. (Sorry for the vent, some of u may know, the Chicago Bulls choked) LOL
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[Harvey Specter]

Originally Posted by tr0ubl3s0m3x

That was awkward as fuck, but maybe if the queen wasn't so self absorbed, she'd signal Obama to hold on when the music started. In a few generations, the monarchy will be nothing more than history. I personally couldn't give a less of a fuck about the monarch. Waste of tax payer's money. What have they done for us recently? Don't talk about the past because that's the past. (Sorry for the vent, some of u may know, the Chicago Bulls choked) LOL
Posted via RS Mobile

I have family and friends in the UK and they were telling me that a majority of Brits already want the monarchy done with or not on the taxpayers dime. I think it'll go down hill for the monarchy once the queen dies.

[zulutango]

Don't worry about the Bulls...it's the Cannucks that are really important anyway!!!!!

[Bouncing Bettys]

Originally Posted by zulutango

Michael Mukasey: Obama administration demoralizes intelligence personnel.
The Obama administration prevents intelligence officers from doing their work to the best of their ability, he said.

He was out of a job the day Obama took office - interesting he can speak on how his administration operates.

Mukasey quoted former CIA Director Michael Hayden as saying that, “as late as 2006, even with the growing success of other intelligence tools, fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of [al-Qaida] came from those interrogations.”

Hey look, Michael Mukasey and I quoted the same person! only my quote example wasn't discussing 5 years ago but something much more recent. Here it is in case you missed it:

Mike Hayden, Former CIA Director Got No Intel From Waterboarding: “I’m willing to concede the point that no one gave us valuable or actionable intelligence while they were, for example, being waterboarded.”

Face it, there is mounting evidence and support from people in the intelligence business which argues against torture as a means of acquiring information.

A letter sent to President Obama from 47 national security officials asks the president to denounce torture in the wake of bin Laden’s death: “In light of the debate following the death of Osama bin Laden, we urge you to make an unequivocal statement that torture is illegal, immoral, and un-American. The use of torture undermines our national security and intelligence gathering efforts. The United States must lead by our core principles and condemn torture

What does John McCain, once captured and tortured by his enemies have to say regarding torture and Bin Laden?

I opposed waterboarding and similar so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ before Osama bin Laden was brought to justice. And I oppose them now. I do not believe they are necessary to our success in our war against terrorists, as the advocates of these techniques claim they are … it was not torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees that got us the major leads that ultimately enabled our intelligence community to find Osama bin Laden.

General David Petraeus Opposes the Use of Torture:

I think it is imperative that we do indeed live our values… So I feel pretty strongly about this, I think that you undermine your cause by practices such as waterboarding and other so called enhancements and at the end of the day I don’t think they, certainly are not worth it and in fact do cause us problems in the long run.

A former US National Security official:

It was not until later, after waterboarding was suspended because it and other harsh techniques became heatedly debated, that Mohammed told interrogators about the existence of a courier particularly close to bin Laden, a fragmentary tip that touched off a years-long manhunt that ended in bin Laden’s death at the hands of U.S. special forces on Sunday

Anyways, this gaff in no way reflects his political experience or lack there of. There have been countless examples of embarrassing actions by world leaders with far more "experience" than Obama.

The point I was making is that despite the irrelevant notion he lacks experience, which you so happily brought up, he is getting shit done. Bin Laden is dead on his watch, who cares about offending an irrelevant monarch.