Looks like Charles Krauthammer must be reading my blog.
That and he read the NYTimes story about Obama being a “buck stops here” kind of drone operator.
So the peacemaker, Nobel laureate, nuclear disarmer, apologizer to the world for America having lost its moral way when it harshly interrogated the very people Obama now kills, has become — just in time for the 2012 campaign — Zeus the Avenger, smiting by lightning strike.
🙂
So I finally read the NYTimes story. It is filled with tons of information. All of it is clearly campaign material and items that will hope can portray Obama as tough on terrorism, keeping us safe, and making the hard moral decisions so others don’t have to.
In reality, it comes across as the Obama version of 1984.
Change the vocabulary and you still follow the rules.
Start with “renditions” that were outlawed on day 1 or 2. After being told that the new order would cause some problems:
Mr. Craig assured him that the new president had no intention of ending rendition — only its abuse, which could lead to American complicity in torture abroad. So a new definition of “detention facility” was inserted, excluding places used to hold people “on a short-term, transitory basis.” Problem solved — and no messy public explanation damped Mr. Obama’s celebration.
And GITMO?
Even before he was sworn in, Mr. Obama’s advisers had warned him against taking a categorical position on what would be done with Guantánamo detainees. The deft insertion of some wiggle words in the president’s order showed that the advice was followed.
Some detainees would be transferred to prisons in other countries, or released, it said. Some would be prosecuted — if “feasible” — in criminal courts. Military commissions, which Mr. Obama had criticized, were not mentioned — and thus not ruled out.
As for those who could not be transferred or tried but were judged too dangerous for release? Their “disposition” would be handled by “lawful means, consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice.”
Bottom line [bold is mine]:
Without showing his hand, Mr. Obama had preserved three major policies — rendition, military commissions and indefinite detention — that have been targets of human rights groups since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
And for those drone strikes and collateral damage? [again, bold is mine]
The president’s directive reinforced the need for caution, counterterrorism officials said, but did not significantly change the program. In part, that is because “the protection of innocent life was always a critical consideration,” said Michael V. Hayden, the last C.I.A. director under President George W. Bush.
It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
I’m just on page 3 of an 8 page article here my friends.
On the plus side, it does help to know that when a President becomes a president he/she will (usually) make the decisions that are needed to be made to keep us safe.
On the down side….what the hell? Do words exist only to twist in the wind while the President does whatever the hell he wants to do no matter what he said previously?
In today’s times we learn that Obama has “ordered a wave of cyberattacks against Iran”. Is this not war?
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