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Obama admin corroborates/affirms W. Bush admin's position...
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Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 3:07 pm Post subject: Obama admin corroborates/affirms W. Bush admin's position...

Quote:

Morning Edition, February 10, 2009 � In the first major national security case of the Obama administration, lawyers representing the government took the exact same position as the [W.] Bush administration. Government attorneys asked a judge to throw out a torture case, citing the need to preserve state secrets...

NPR Reports

Kuros

Joined: 27 Apr 2004

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 4:07 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Many senior Obama nominees for national security positions have not yet been confirmed. Robert Raben, a former U.S. assistant attorney general during the Clinton administration, believes the administration's position on state secrets may evolve once those people arrive. "I just don't think there's been enough time," Raben said. "I don't think every computer has been turned on in the executive branch, I don't think every seat has been warmed by the smarties that will sit down and figure out what the policy will be.

"I think people need to stay calm," said Raben

Eric Holder was only confirmed as Attorney G. just a week ago.

Its not good, but we'll see, it may be temporary.

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 5:27 pm Post subject:

Kuros wrote:

Its not good, but we'll see, it may be temporary.

Quote:

Attorney General Eric Holder ordered senior Justice Department officials to review all of the [W.] Bush administration's assertions of the state secret privilege.

"It is vital we protect information that, if released, could jeopardize national security, but the Justice Department will make sure that the privilege is not invoked to hide from the American people information about their government's actions that they have a right to know," department spokesman Matthew Miller said. He said the attorney general intends to make sure the privilege is only invoked in "legally appropriate" situations.

How will you respond, Kuros, should E. Holder and his people conclude their reviews and then, in at least some of the cases, concur with the W. Bush administration's judgment?

Also, I believe B. Obama has recd all the briefings there are on the current war. What if, upon hearing this information in its entirety, he has already moved in this direction?

As for me it will do two things: prove me right re: the far left and antiwar left's dangerous naivety on national-security issues; prove me wrong re: suspecting Democrats of not being willing and/or able to manage national-security affairs responsibly -- for example, J. Carter and Desert One; B. Clinton and Somalia.

Hater Depot

Joined: 29 Mar 2005

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 5:54 pm Post subject:

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/02/dear-obama-administration.html

Quote:

It would be one thing if the state secrets privilege meant only that government officials could not be asked to provide evidence in a case. That would be bad, but not as bad as the state secrets privilege, which (if I understand it) allows the government to argue not simply that it should not be required to testify, but that plaintiffs should not be allowed to try to establish certain sorts of facts on their own, from the public record. When those facts are central to the plaintiffs' case, as they are here, the government can argue that that case should be dismissed. To allow the executive the power to make such claims simply on its own say-so, without any opportunity for anyone to verify them, is just plain wrong. Again, the Obama administration cannot be expected to have made this power go away, but it can absolutely be expected not to use it.

Moreover, I have read the government's filing invoking the state secrets privilege. Like every other Bush administration court filing I have read, it is striking not just for the breadth of the powers it claims for the government, but for the complete absence of any concern for justice. When the government has argued against Guantanamo detainees' petitions, including those of people it has itself found not to be enemy combatants, it always seems to consider only what is convenient for itself, never the fact that keeping people locked up for seven years for no reason is a sufficiently dreadful thing to do that it might be worth a bit of inconvenience to avoid it.

Likewise in this case. Here's what was done to one of the defendants:

"Early on the morning of July 22, 2002, a Gulfstream V aircraft, then registered with the FAA as N379P, flew Mohamed to Rabat, Morocco where he was interrogated and tortured for 18 months. In Morocco his interrogators routinely beat him, sometimes to the point of losing consciousness, and he suffered multiple broken bones. During one incident, Mohamed was cut 20 to 30 times on his genitals. On another occasion, a hot stinging liquid was poured into open wounds on his *beep* as he was being cut. He was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution and death. He was forced to listen to loud music day and night, placed in a room with open sewage for a month at a time and drugged repeatedly."

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 6:38 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool
The role of the CIA's controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say.
By Greg Miller

February 1, 2009

Reporting from Washington � The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.

Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator missile strikes -- for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-rendition1-2009feb01,0,5642032,print.story

Hater Depot

Joined: 29 Mar 2005

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 7:29 pm Post subject:

The controversy isn't over rendition per se, but rather extraordinary rendition where the purpose is to send the captured person to a country that uses torture. So just to say that Obama will allow rendition doesn't really get at the real issue.

bacasper

Joined: 26 Mar 2007

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 7:57 pm Post subject:

Gopher wrote:

As for me it will do two things: prove me right re: the far left and antiwar left's dangerous naivety on national-security issues; prove me wrong re: suspecting Democrats of not being willing and/or able to manage national-security affairs responsibly -- for example, J. Carter and Desert One; B. Clinton and Somalia.

And prove me right regarding Obama's lie of promised "change."

Kuros wrote:

Eric Holder was only confirmed as Attorney G. just a week ago.

Its not good, but we'll see, it may be temporary.

Kuros, you aren't really basing your hopes for change on Eric Holder, attorney for Chiquita's death squads in Colombia, are you?

Good luck on that one.

TheUrbanMyth

Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 11:14 pm Post subject:

bacasper wrote:

Gopher wrote:

And prove me right regarding Obama's lie of promised "change."

Kuros wrote:

Eric Holder was only confirmed as Attorney G. just a week ago.

Its not good, but we'll see, it may be temporary.

Kuros, you aren't really basing your hopes for change on Eric Holder, attorney for Chiquita's death squads in Colombia, are you?

Good luck on that one.

When is that trial for Bush coming about by the way?

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 7:23 am Post subject:

TheUrbanMyth wrote:

When is that trial for Bush coming about by the way?

Looks like they are going to have to indict B. Obama as well...That or they must acknowledge that they have misjudged and been too dogmatically dismissive re: the threat that our govt is seeing and facing.

bacasper

Joined: 26 Mar 2007

Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 9:42 pm Post subject:

TheUrbanMyth wrote:

bacasper wrote:

Gopher wrote:

And prove me right regarding Obama's lie of promised "change."

Kuros wrote:

Eric Holder was only confirmed as Attorney G. just a week ago.

Its not good, but we'll see, it may be temporary.

Kuros, you aren't really basing your hopes for change on Eric Holder, attorney for Chiquita's death squads in Colombia, are you?

Good luck on that one.

When is that trial for Bush coming about by the way?

Nice try at derailing the conversation by posting an off-topic question. I'm in a good mood so I'll humor you this one time, but don't expect it as a regular thing.

If you mean the one for murder, you should ask Vincent Bugliosi.

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2009 9:55 pm Post subject:

Act II...

Quote:

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration told a federal court late Friday it will maintain the Bush administration's position that battlefield detainees held without charges by the United States in Afghanistan are not entitled to constitutional rights to challenge their detention.

"Having considered the matter, the government adheres to its previously articulated position..."

CNN Reports

You know, that W. Bush was such a liar...

chickenpie

Joined: 24 Dec 2008

Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2009 9:58 pm Post subject:

Surprise and shock the US are acting like a bunch of c*nts!! Who would have guessed.

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 12:22 am Post subject:

chickenpie wrote:

Surprise and shock the US are acting like a bunch of c*nts!!

Who would have guessed. Rolling Eyes

The US behaves better than most countires during war.

The US is one of the most free and tolerant nations in the world.

The US justice system is not up to dealing w/Al Qaeda.

Stoping Bathists, Khomeni followers or Al Qaedists from getting what they want is justice.

Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005

Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 8:03 am Post subject:

chickenpie wrote:

...the US are acting like a bunch of c*nts!!

Who would have guessed. Rolling Eyes

You are talking about Barack Obama. What are you, a racist?

Kuros

Joined: 27 Apr 2004

Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 9:24 am Post subject:

The President wields Executive Power

Quote:

Last week, in the case Fadi al Maqaleh, United States District Judge John D. Bates denied that President Obama could make suspected "enemy combatants" disappear into the Bagram Theater Internment Facility at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan without an opportunity for exoneration. (While President Obama has abandoned the term enemy combatant for Guantanamo Bay detainees, he has retained the label for detainees held elsewhere.)

Bates' ruling is a welcome check on an emerging pattern of mightily expansive claims of executive authority by the new administration. In early February, President Obama sought another imperial power before the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in the case Mohammed v. Jeppesen Dataplan. The complaint alleged that the plaintiffs had been seized by American personnel, taken to airports, stripped, blindfolded, shackled to the floor of a Gulfstream V, and taken to destination countries for torture and harsh incarceration. The District Court dismissed the complaint because then-President Bush and Vice President Cheney argued that state secrets would be exposed if the case were litigated. During oral argument before the 9th Circuit, Obama echoed the state-secrets argument made by Bush and Cheney. Similarly, the president who promised "change" is wielding the tool of state secrets in aiming to dismiss, without the gathering of evidence, challenges to the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program, which entailed warrantless phone or e-mail interceptions of American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. This defense has failed before Judge Vaughn R. Walker in early rounds of the litigation. And, again, the state-secrets privilege is the administration's response, if ancillary to a defense of retroactive immunity, in a brief filed last week to the efforts of the Electronic Frontier Foundation to sue Bush administration officials for the NSA's wiretapping.

In principle, President Obama is maintaining that victims of constitutional wrongdoing by the U.S. government should be denied a remedy to prevent the American people and the world at large from learning of the lawlessness perpetrated in the name of national security and exacting political and legal accountability.

Obama wants to open Gitmo but shroud the secret prisons.

I find this extremely distasteful.

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