Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Change you can believe in! Er, well...

Seems as if the Obama administration has found that, well, it doesn't oppose everything George W. Bush and his administration did in the war on terror. Far from it, as even the NY Times admits:

"Even as it pulls back from harsh interrogations and other sharply debated aspects of George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism,” the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for other major elements of its predecessor’s approach to fighting Al Qaeda.
In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently, Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A.’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone.
The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team’s arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the “state secrets” doctrine. It has also left the door open to resuming military commission trials. And earlier this month, after a British court cited pressure by the United States in declining to release information about the alleged torture of a detainee in American custody, the Obama administration issued a statement thanking the British government “for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information.”

Indeed, veterans and defenders of the Bush administration should feel vindicated. What they did and what they advocated wasn't so totalitarian and misguided after all, eh?