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Y'all need to simmah down!
Author: Scoopster    Date: 02/12/2009 20:25:58

A few days ago, this news report came out citing an attorney for the US Government who had pushed to dismiss charges made by five former Guantanamo Bay detainees that they had been tortured while in captivity.

"A source inside of the Ninth U.S. District Court tells ABC News that a representative of the Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn't changed, that new administration stands behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all," continued ABC. "The DOJ lawyer said the entire subject matter remains a state secret."

"This case cannot be litigated," Department of Justice attorney Douglas Letter argued. "The judges shouldn't play with fire in this national security situation."

Asked by Judge Mary Schroeder whether the change in the White House had led to any changes in the government's legal arguments in the case, Letter said it "remains the position" of the government that the case should not proceed.


Immediately those warning bells of heightened awareness that we had all so keenly developed during the dark days of the Bush Administration went off. And The ever-vigilant left wing took aim at Obama.

"We are shocked and deeply disappointed that the Justice Department has chosen to continue the Bush administration’s practice of dodging judicial scrutiny of extraordinary rendition and torture," ACLU Staff Attorney Ben Wizner said in a Monday advisory released after the government stated its position. "This was an opportunity for the new administration to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay the course. Now we must hope that the court will assert its independence by rejecting the government’s false claims of state secrets and allowing the victims of torture and rendition their day in court."


And our beloved Rachel also did a segment on this, asking us to talk her down..



I'm not gonna link to all the various blog postings that are out there. For one, a bunch of 'em are over at a website that I no longer visit (that's a story for another time). And there's too many to count really - Greenwald, HuffPo, TPM, The Times (LA and NY), and The Guardian UK to name a few sources all have various opinion pieces proclaiming the end of the f'n world.

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I'll admit it. This shit has got me downright depressed. But not for the reason you may suspect. You see, I have this virtue/failing where I trust people a lot. I take people at their word, and I hold them to it most of the time. Of course with Bush we all figured out that the stupid goon or any of his cronies couldn't be trusted, so of course I make an exemption in my own moral code. But he's gone now, and while some cautious optimism remains I've mostly put away that exemption and am willing to let Obama have some breathing room before I start cursing him up & down the wall.

So a while back, when Obama himself said that his administration would review all of Bush's policies to determine what needed to be reversed or changed, I accepted that at face value. Now this comes along. And I remember another recent piece of news I saw the same day as this rendition case thing...

Thursday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wrote Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, asking him to "immediately review the circumstances behind the conversion of these positions and the hiring of any former Bush administration appointees as career or temporary officials within the Office of Detainee Affairs."

"Allegations of improper 'burrowing' of political appointees to career positions are very troubling to me," wrote Sen. Feinstein. "This is especially disconcerting within the Office of Detainee Affairs due to the nature of the policy recommendations that office provides regarding Guantanamo."


Then today, there's this one:

US defence officials are preventing Barack Obama from seeing evidence that a former British resident held in Guantánamo Bay has been tortured, the prisoner's lawyer said last night, as campaigners and the Foreign Office prepared for the man's release in as little as a week.

Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal charity Reprieve, which represents Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, sent Obama evidence of what he called "truly mediaeval" abuse but substantial parts were blanked out so the president could not read it.

...

Stafford Smith tells Obama he should be aware of the "bizarre reality" of the situation. "You, as commander in chief, are being denied access to material that would help prove that crimes have been committed by US personnel. This decision is being made by the very people who you command."


So follow me here for a second. If this is happening in the Defense Department, where a Bush appointee is still running the show, is it reasonable that there could be other such people pushing Bush-era policies in other places, like Justice? Add to that the fact that Eric Holder wasn't confirmed by the Senate until Feb. 2 and hasn't even named who the new US Attorneys will be yet (that should happen today I think).

And then there's an argument that Obama's transition team had months to review these policies before taking office. Sure, they did. However I'm sure the economic crisis took away a good amount of the focus on other matters, and again it's fair to say that the Bushbots that were still running things weren't as forthcoming with transitional officials as anyone might have hoped.

Until these people are filtered out and replaced, and until the new guys finish their review of prior policies and pass the word on, there are going to be mixed signals at various levels of authority and it's fair to say that the folks at the bottom, like the trial attorney in this case, just hasn't gotten the word yet. Or, he's a mole himself and needs to get cleansed.

So to all the people out there on the blogs and in the papers and on the teevee - go smoke a doob and have a couple glasses of wine. I know that constant vigilance is a good thing, but you're all being way too paranoid about the wrong thing here.

Update: In response to a comment over at FSZ, I am not saying that people should stop pushing the government just because there's been a change in who's running the show, or in the speed at which these things get changed. If it comes off sounding that way I apologize. I'm trying to raise concern here that there are people leftover and hidden who standing in the way of changing policy, and that we need to also focus attention on this problem.
 

35 comments (Latest Comment: 02/13/2009 07:11:13 by livingonli)
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