Promoting democracy:

"[T]here are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy."

Religious liberty:

"Among some Muslims, there is a disturbing tendency to measure one's own faith by the rejection of another's. The richness of religious diversity must be upheld " whether it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt. And fault lines must be closed among Muslims as well, as the divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence, particularly in Iraq. Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together. We must always examine the ways in which we protect it."

The rights of women:

"Our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons, and our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity " men and women " to reach their full potential. I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice."

These weren't rebukes or condemnations, they were a president issuing a challenge, and forging a new basis for an international relationship. It was also a reminder that Obama, no matter where he is, doesn't talk down to his audiences, or shy away from nuance or complex ideas.---Steve Benen

What arguably mattered most about the speech was the president using that credibility and goodwill to challenge Muslims and the Middle East to do more.

A rejection of anti-American attitudes:

"Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known."

A rejection of 9/11 conspiracy theories:

"I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with."

Support for Israel:

"Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed -- more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.... The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems. Instead, it must be a cause for action to help the Palestinian people develop the institutions that will sustain their state; to recognize Israel's legitimacy; and to choose progress over a self-defeating focus on the past."

Rejection of violence:

"Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered."

Its getting more and more pathetic as the Party of Lincoln evolves into the Party of the Liquored. But perhaps even worse is the incessant obliviousness to the fact that everything they've said in the past is readily available to be shoved down their pieholes whenever they hypocritically place themselves on opposite sides of the same issues over and over again. "Gonzo" and his good-ole boy Texas shingle? Good Hispanic. "Sotomayor" and her top drawer, Ivy League pedigree and decade plus service on the federal bench? Bad Hispanic. Si?

Credibility must not mean too much in today's Republican Party or perhaps it just wasn't mentioned in the latest talking points memo released from party headquarters; errrrrrrrr, Rush's latest comedy routine....

Sounds like the current administration to me.

It would to you. Thanks for proving my point.

Is the GOP trying to increase the unemployment roles by idling the joke writers across America? Have they become so caught up in their own parallel universe that they don't think the rest of us comprehend the english language nor comprehend terms being misused intentionally by those whose practices DEFINED the very term they use derisively against the current Administration?

For all the lambasting the Democratic Party has taken since the rise of the Reagan Revolution, I've never seen a party fall so fast and so far while daily doubling-down on even more policies running counter to where the American people currently lie. I guess it never occurs to them that when the "right-track/wrong-track" numbers have tripled toward the good that complaining about the President actually implimenting the policies which got him elected isn't quite a slam on either him nor on liberalism. The country has left the GOP and it doesn't look to be coming back anytime soon particularly when the GOP hasn't forwarded a decent counterplan to anything which US families are trying to deal with in order to restore stability to our lives and to our economy so that it works for everyone, not just the players on Wall Street.

If it hasn't become somewhat clearer over the disclosures of the past week, the very FACT that the US' own SERE program was the template used by the Bush Administration underscores that preempting attacks WASN'T the goal of implimenting torture techniques. The goal was to force prisoners into "confessing" to a coordination between Saddam and OBL and the existence of an operational relationship tying Saddam to the events on 9/11.

The SERE program, by its existence, is the US military's effort to train soldiers in the torturous methods honed by the Communist Chinese, North Vietnamese, former Soviets and sundry other brutal regimes so that if captured they would be less likely to state false information confirming the enemies obvious goals. The program acknowledges that torture DOESN'T produce reliable information, but is perfect for getting prisoners to state whatever it is their captors would like to be disseminated publically for propaganda purposes.

This is the genesis of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld etal. torture policy and it should be decried by every single freedom loving American as the complete opposite of what this nation, ruled by laws, not results, stands for.

The more the truth comes out, the more many of those invested in the likely criminal conduct of US officials will try to spin gold from straw.

Is it such a stretch to believe those whose goals appeared to be the use of techniques known to force the unwilling to LIE, not to tell the truth, knew precisely what they were doing? It wasn't about thwarting future attacks, it was about having so-called "higher-ups" in Al Quaeda squawk that they were in partnership with Saddam Hussein in perpetrating the attacks of 9/11.

One day the spinning will stop and we will get to the bottom of this sorted mess. And some of us won't forget who were using tactics created and honed by both the Third Reich and the Communist Chinese as tenets of US policy towards certain enemies of the state.

It should not be up to some external entity to bring legal action against the previous administration when the current AG has already acknowledged that water boarding is torture and torture is illegal. If an illegal act has been committed, the AG has an obligation to prosecute.

That's the gist of the problem NOW! Its not the AG's purview to decide what's legal or illegal, its up to jurists who interpret the policy based on the Constitution, not political expediency.

Too many people have the short view. We already know much of the courts are packed with conservative justices who purportedly are "strict constructionists" of the law. Well, if this is the case, will they undermine the conservative judicial ethos in order to nakedly cover what the language of the Constitution explicitly denies governmental agents? Won't this, as others mentioned above, undermine much of what the conservatives have said they stand for and believe in as it regards limiting the powers of the federal government?

I see the natural pace and progression of this issue to be a continuing reminder to all of the difference between competing philosophies, namely standing by and upholding the law even for those who deny others these same basic rights. Whether it involves courts or just the court of public opinion, the Bush Administration and its members who rationalized and institutionalized fear and abusive tactics will be held accountable as they are right now by us and the majority waking to find the embarassing legacy they've left for the world to see.

I've got a theory based on watching Obama over these last couple of years: He'll usually take a pragmatic, long-view approach to issues that many want immediate responses to.

Let me flesh this out. I don't think any of us believe that the current President thinks that the actions undertaken during the Bush Administration WEREN'T illegal and in violation of previous US and international law. Indeed, the Bush Justice Department interpreted the law to exempt both the activities and personnel they ordered to do what they did. But in the same vein, as President, Obama has now become the "keeper of the flame" in which POTUS' don't take open action to eviserate their predecessors lest the next opposition President might do the same to them on some future occassion.

So this is how I see this playing out. In order to have ANY authority to be successful at his job, Obama cannot be seen as an abject partisan by the opposition party. However, the saving grace here is the rule of law. The Bushies wrote all their opinions and memos outlining the legal justification for what they deemed necessary. In the end, the courts are going to have the final call as to whether this interpretation passes constitutional muster, and if like many of us believe that it can't, the Obama Justice Department will have no other recourse than to pursue legal action against those caught in this web. But the emphasis must come from "outside" the White House, not from within. This is where I trust Obama until I'm proven wrong.

If this scenario comes into play, Obama will have publically protected those who'll likely be prosecuted while still renouncing their actions, implicitly revealing his true feelings as a constitutional scholar. The right cannot accuse him of leading a witch hunt, but in the end, "right" will be vindicated as many believe it should be, and the Obama JD will competently pursue whatever legal actions the courts deem it should.

Again, based on recent events and history I see this as the most plausible course for these events to take, both protecting Obama's political capital as a fair, even-handed executive, but leading to the ends which law-abiding citizens rightly demand for those who operated outside the law under the color of authority they'd given themselves extralegally.

I think the Nanc may also have forgotten what the original pledge by the Bush Admin. was for tsunami relief and how low it initially sounded.

And then what the US commitment really turned out to be, plus the tremendous amount of private funds raised by Clinton and H.W. Bush.

No forgetting, just another cheap opportunity to impugn Obama and his nascient administration because they don't subscribe to the same ideology as the prior occupants of the White House.

Just the same ole', same ole'....

Did you read the original announcement and still not understand that this was only an IMMEDIATE cash payment directly from the embassy?

Do you believe that is the full extent of the aid the United States will provide Italy for this tragedy?

No and No....But did you hear what Sean Hannity said about Obama and his non-America-loving self?

WHEN THE RIGHT DEMANDS JINGOISM.... It's hard to guess what far-right media personalities are going to find worthy of a feeding frenzy. Apparently, President Obama's comments -- four days ago -- about renewing the U.S. partnership with our European allies are the new rallying point for hysterical conservative whining.

It started in earnest on Saturday when Sean Hannity engaged in a little creative editing and blasted the president for acknowledging that there have been times in which the U.S. had "shown arrogance" towards our friends in Europe.

This line of attack didn't seem to go anywhere. There was no buzz on the morning shows yesterday, little from Drudge, nothing from Politico, nothing from Halperin. Hannity's condemnation came and went, except for those who noted Hannity taking the president out of context.

And yet, today, Fox News seems to be talking about little else. Hannity, Karl Rove, Nicole Wallace, Steve Forbes, Mike Huckabee, and a variety of Fox News personalities are positively outraged that the president dared to say something mildly critical of previous American attitudes. Obama's speech, they insist, is evidence that the president doesn't love America as much as they do.

Again, Obama's comments were aired live to a national television audience on Friday morning, and it wasn't considered remotely controversial. Now, the far-right is apoplectic because, well, just because.

Given that Fox News didn't care on Friday, but cares about little else today, what do you want to bet that some Republican National Committee staffers, after strategizing over the weekend, sent out a memo this morning to Fox News, encouraging them to hit this "story" as the "scandal" of the day?

Ray...

The question had NOTHING to do with economic policies borne out by the hole this nation was placed in over the last 8 years. You are conflating things having zero to do with each other as Jeff correctly stated.

Lawyerspeak. Sorry - no, we aren't; we just think we are.

I think just the opposite. Obama was saying, "Yes, we are, but so is everyone else in their own ways that contribute to the betterment of society on a global scale."

Americans have quite a bit to be proud, of but we're not alone in that distinction nor are we above recognizing the accomplishments and achievements of others who view their societies like we do ours.

So . . . is it yes? Or no?

...I'd also say that its reflective of someone who understands reality often has more than one dimension.

Why does this not surprise me?

If Obama endorses the concept of American exceptionalism, and explains during an overseas visit that he believes the U.S. is a uniquely special nation, above all others, he runs the risk of reinforcing the notion of American arrogance and jingoism. American exceptionalism is, after all, a favorite of the neocons, and undergirds the idea that we operate on a different level than everyone else. But if Obama rejects the concept, he might give the impression that he sees his own country as less than special or unique. His critics would pounce, insisting that to give up on American exceptionalism is to give up on America's role as leader of the free world.

Given this, the president's response was pretty interesting.

I'd say it was interesting, and I'd also say that its reflective of someone who understands reality often has more than one dimension. Had Obama spurned the notion that the American Experience wasn't indeed unique in the positive sense, those who staunchly preach this gospel would have had further ammunition in their attempts to paint him as less American than they's prefer.

His answer is reflective of his manner of conciliation and belief in both shared responsibility and shared success. Bravo.