Americans voted for Change

[Drake Tungsten]

Your point in #465 is stupid and wrong. They have plenty of evidence to convict KSM, Zubaydah and other high-level detainees.

[Drake Tungsten]

Finally, a real change from the Bush Administration...

Miranda Rights for Terrorists

When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer,” he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet.

Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. “I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal – read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up,” Tenet wrote in his memoirs.

If Tenet is right, it’s a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.”

That effort, which elevates the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and diminishes the role of intelligence and military officials, was described in a May 28 Los Angeles Times article...

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/06/miranda_rights_for_terrorists.asp

I really hope this isn't accurate.

[DinoDoc]

[Drake Tungsten]

Obama

The Obama administration's counterterrorism chief appeared to provide the first indication the administration may not make its January deadline for closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay in remarks Thursday that aimed to outline a new path for combating terrorism.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124960175308212811.html

Keep Gitmo open.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

We're saved

[Heraclitus]

We're saved

Thank Jebus.

[Drake Tungsten]

Obama

The Obama administration has decided not to seek legislation to establish a new system of preventive detention to hold terrorism suspects and will instead rely on a 2001 congressional resolution authorizing military force against al-Qaeda and the Taliban to continue to detain people indefinitely and without charge, according to administration officials.

Leading congressional Democrats and members of the civil rights community had signaled opposition to any new indefinite-detention regime, fearing that it would expand government powers and undermine the rule of law and U.S. legal traditions.

The administration's decision avoids a potentially rancorous debate that could alienate key allies at a time when President Obama needs congressional and public support to transfer detainees held at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States for trial or continued incarceration. ...

In federal court in March, the Obama administration cited the 2001 congressional authorization of force to assert that "the president has the authority to detain persons that the president determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, and persons who harbored those responsible for those attacks. The president also has the authority to detain persons who were part of, or substantially supported, Taliban or al-Qaeda forces or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act, or has directly supported hostilities, in aid of such enemy armed forces."

That recast the Bush administration's broad claim of inherent executive authority to hold any person who was "part of or supporting" the Taliban or al-Qaeda.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/23/AR2009092304427.html

[Drake Tungsten]

Obama

Rebuffed this month by skeptical lawmakers when it sought finances to buy a prison in rural Illinois, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with the money to replace the Guantánamo Bay prison.

As a result, officials now believe that they are unlikely to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer its population of terrorism suspects until 2011 at the earliest — a far slower timeline for achieving one of President Obama’s signature national security policies than they had previously hinted.

http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/us/politics/23gitmo.html

[HalfLotus]

Campaign promises kept: zero

Campaign promises broken: a lot

Pretty sad that so many Americans fell for that ****. Ron Paul 2012.

[Drake Tungsten]

Campaign promises kept: zero

What are you talking about? Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan, as promised.

[Imran Siddiqui]

And, let's be honest, the Senate Health Care bill was what Obama basically campaigned on, plus mandates. Too many progressives were blinded by the hopenchange to see that.

[Drake Tungsten]

And, let's be honest, the Senate Health Care bill was what Obama basically campaigned on, plus mandates.

1. He was against an individual mandate before he was for it.

2. He campaigned on the public option, which isn't in the Senate bill.

3. Healthcare reform hasn't passed yet, so you can't count it as a kept campaign promise. Let's revisit the issue in February.

[Imran Siddiqui]

1 & 2: Minor details.

3: Good point.

[Drake Tungsten]

And, let's be honest, the Senate Health Care bill was what Obama basically campaigned on, plus mandates.

Instead of honestly admitting that the bill working its way through Congress does not fully meet his campaign promises, Obama has decided the proper strategy is to just lie to the American people:

[Obama] said the Senate legislation accomplishes “95 percent” of what he called for during his 2008 presidential campaign and in his September speech to a joint session of Congress on the need for health-care reform. ...

Obama said the public option “has become a source of ideological contention between the left and right.” But, he added, “I didn’t campaign on the public option.”

This is just a set of bald-faced lies, as I demonstrated in detail earlier this week. The public option was clearly part of his campaign plan. His campaign plan also promised a national exchange, drug re-importation, an employer mandate, direct Medicare drug price negotiations, to let you keep your current plan if you like it, and to bring down health care costs by $2,500 per year for a family. The Senate bill will do none of these things.

Obama did promise to not do two very important things with health care reform. He promised to not include an individual mandate and not tax employer-provided health insurance benefits. This Senate bill breaks both of those promises.

This health care reform fight already made Obama look like a weak leader and a defender of the corporate lobbyists. Now, it has also made him a liar–one who is discrediting the widely acknowledge need for much greater reform. For all the people in the “we will fix it later” crowd, please notice Obama is not on your side. He thinks this reform bill is just fine as it is.

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/12/22/obama-thinks-lying-to-the-american-people-is-the-best-strategy/

[HalfLotus]

A public option is important to a lot of voters, according to polling. I wouldn't characterize its omission as a minor detail.