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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (485822)	6/4/2009 8:06:47 PM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 1574096

Obama is continuing essentially without change 8 of 11 BUSH national security policy elements (generally reversing hiw own campaign promises in doing so). Of the three policy elements changed (closing Gitmo, abandoning secret overseas prisons, and CIA interrogation policy), on two of them he has either left a loophole or has commissioned a study which will likely change CIA interrogation policies again. ..... But his administration has embraced the BUSH view that, as a legal matter, the United States is in a state of war with al Qaeda and its affiliates, and that the president's commander-in-chief powers are triggered. This position should be unsurprising: Congress has made clear that we are at war with these groups, and the Supreme Court has affirmed that we are. ..... Military detention Many Obama supporters thought he would oppose the detention of terrorist suspects without trial. But not so. Last month Secretary of Defense Gates hinted that up to 100 suspected terrorists would be detained without trial. And a few weeks ago the Obama Justice Department filed a legal brief arguing that the president can detain indefinitely, without charge or trial, members of al Qaeda, the Taliban, "associated forces," and those who "substantially support" these groups, no matter where in the world they are captured. Federal district court judge Reggie Walton correctly noted that the Obama administration refinements drew "metaphysical distinctions" with the BUSH position that seemed to be "of a minimal if not ephemeral character." The Obama refinements might preclude detention of some suspected terrorists who would be detainable under the BUSH regime, but only at the margin. The core BUSH legal position remains in place. 4. Habeas Corpus During the campaign former professor Obama spoke eloquently about the importance of habeas corpus review of executive detentions of enemy soldiers. Habeas corpus is "the foundation of Anglo-American law" and "the essence of who we are," he said. But his administration has applied this principle in the same narrow fashion as the late BUSH administration. It has argued that Guantanamo detainees can challenge the "fact, duration, or location" of confinement on habeas review, but not their "conditions of confinement." It has maintained that "the Geneva Conventions are not judicially enforceable by private individuals" in habeas proceedings. And it has made clear its belief that the limited habeas rights it recognizes for the two hundred or so detainees on Guantanamo Bay do not extend to the 600 or so detainees in Bagram Air Base. ...... But last week the Obama administration said it would revive military commissions. ....... Targeted Killing Targeted killing is another BUSH administration policy being continued, and indeed ramped up, by President Obama. The new administration has used unmanned predator drones to kill suspected al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan at a greater rate than the BUSH administration. These more aggressive targeted killings have predictably caused more collateral damage to innocent civilians. ....... Rendition The Obama administration has said that it will continue renditions--the practice, dating back at least to the Clinton administration, of grabbing suspected terrorists in one country and bringing them to another. CIA director Panetta has said that the Obama administration will not render suspects for purposes of torture, and many have seen this position as a rejection of the BUSH form of rendition. But despite this rhetoric, the Obama administration will continue to use the Bush-Clinton standard of foreign country assurances concerning torture, a standard that prohibited rendition only when it is "more likely than not"--that is, a greater than 50 percent chance--"that the suspect will be subjected to torture." ..... President Obama's executive order barring the CIA from using "detention facilities" contained a loophole for "facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis." The degree to which the Obama policy is a true departure from the late BUSH practice thus depends on the administration's (probably secret) interpretation of what it means to detain someone on a "short-term, transitory basis." 9. Surveillance ... In office, President Obama has not renounced or sought to narrow any of the surveillance powers used by the late BUSH administration, and has not sought legislation to reverse the telecom's immunity. Nor has he yet acted to fulfill his campaign pledge to significantly strengthen the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board that oversees and protects civil liberties in intelligence gathering. The Obama surveillance program appears to be identical to the late BUSH era program. 10. State Secrets .... in at least three lawsuits growing out of Bush-era surveillance and rendition practices, the Obama Justice Department endorsed the same broad view of the state secrets privilege as the BUSH administration. .... the Obama executive order established a task force to study whether the CIA should be able to use different interrogation techniques than the military, and CIA Director Panetta supports tougher interrogation techniques for his agency in some circumstances. As a result, the jury is still out on the differences between CIA interrogation techniques used during the late BUSH administration and those ultimately used by Obama's CIA. ..... The main difference between the Obama and BUSH administrations concerns not the substance of terrorism policy, but rather its packaging. Message 25660099