Today, new Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department embraced Bush administration claims of "state secrets" in the ACLU lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan for its role in Bush's extraordinary rendition program. Jeppesen's involvement in the "torture flights" of an undetermined number of terror suspect abductees, making a tidy profit for themselves in the meantime. . . .
IIRC, Jeppsen is a publisher of aviation charts and flight planning software. Fascist tools!
Barack Obama has gotten quite a free ride from the "change" and "hope" crowd. When he quickly issued executive orders closing the CIA "black site" prisons and shutting down the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" torture, including waterboarding, much of the liberal and human rights world shouted, "Torture is over." Guantanamo would be closed (within a year), and the whole world could rest easy that the humane and totally vetted Army Field Manual would guide interrogators and protect vulnerable prisoners from the brig at the Naval Base at Charleston, South Carolina to the U.S. run prison at Baghram Air Base in Afghanistan.Moreover, the Obama administration was proclaiming a new era of governmental transparency. The Freedom of Information Act was to be returned to its days of glory, and the new Attorney General assured his Senate questioners that old abusive use of "state secrets" privilege by the Executive Branch was a thing of the past, with such invocation only to be be used "in legally appropriate situations."
But what is the situation we have today? The conditions at Guantanamo worsen day by day, with 20 percent of the prison population on hunger strike. Binyam Mohamed himself lies near death. Obama has ordered a review of interrogation procedures which has some worried he will okay certain exceptions for the CIA. Meanwhile, the myth of a model humane Army Field Manual has been broken via exposure of abusive techniques inside its Appendix M, and elsewhere in its text. . . .
It really doesn't matter who is president of the United States when it comes to torture policy. That has been in the hands of the CIA and certain folk in the Pentagon and Executive Branch for a long time now. Obama and Holder have demonstrated they have zero intention in challenging that institutional status quo, even if that means throwing entire civil suits brought by torture victims out of court, even when the information about the suit is almost totally part of the public record.
This is not about keeping secrets safe. It's about controlling what the public can hear and not hear, so the repressive apparatus of the state can be allowed to function without public scrutiny or public control.What will the followers of Obama do now? Will they sell out the most wretched and cruelly tortured for the feel-good vibes of the moment? Or will they hold their candidate to account?
In the komments, the Kos Kiddies are rather scathingly critical of their clay-footed object of worship.
I'm angry and getting angrier. This is a betrayal of the highest order, and a turn backwards from what many people hoped was a nightmare of the past. Here's the news: the nightmare isn't over. And when Obama finally got a chance to really chime in with his own national security vs. human rights and civil liberties policy, he failed utterly.
I am thoroughly disgusted with Obama's new neo-conciousness. Bi-partisanship, my ass. He just wants to be one of the guys now that he's been elevated to the Presidency and already spotlighted in history. If only he would have the wisdom and the fight to bring this rocking ship of state a'right with bank nationalization and no mercy for BushCo war criminals.
He needs courage. He is, thus far, no hero. I wonder if he will see to his responsibilities at all, or is this okay to criminality just the tip of the iceberg? The introductory nominations of Daschle, Geithner & Gensler (at CFTC) portend "more of the very same policies that got us into this mess," as he says so often.
Now, I happen to think Obama is actually doing the right thing by not embracing the moonbat "End torture NOW! Prosecute the Bushitler war criminals!" BS. On the other hand, if the Looney Left wants to turn on him over it, and the resulting fratricide undermines Obama's liberal program, well . . . I don't mind a bit.
Confusion to our enemies!