Shocker! While Obama Continues Bush’s Policies The Left Won’t Protest

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Tom Maguire goes out on a limb…..well, not really, Obama has quietly been backing Bush’s policies for some time now….and makes a prediction. Obama will allow the atomic noogie to be performed on terrorists bent on destroying our nation:

On the same topic of Obama’s backsliding towards Bush Glenn Greenwald has a poignant and amusing column that might have been titled, “Hey, Where’d Everybody Go?” Apparently Greenwald has been serious about his civil liberties tirades over the last few years and is shocked to find that for most of his fellow progressives the civil liberties shtick was only useful insofar as it could be used to bash Bush. Yeah, no one saw that coming. Andrew Sullivan was similarly shocked to find that the gay community will be asked to remain seated at the back of the bus despite having committed themselves to a President “who really seemed to get it“.

Let me get ahead of the curve and reveal today a major Obama flip-flop yet to come. Back in his first glorious days in office when Obama magically closed Gitmo and ended Bush’s deplorable military commissons Obama also ended torture, making the Army Field Manual the rulebook for both military and CIA interrogations.

Yet Gitmo remains open, with no credible alternative in view; the dreadful Bush commissions have been supplanted by the glorious Obama commissions; and Obama’s executive order included a 180 day study of appropriate interrogation techniques for the CIA.

180 days would take us to the last quiet weeks of July. Last winter Intelligence leaders made the case that the CIA ought to be able to work under different rules, and presumably are still making that case.

So next July, be prepared to welcome back the Belly Slap, the Attention Grab, and probably even Walling. Waterboarding is too radioactive, even though Holder can’t seem to articulate the case against it, so that will not be on the revised list of CIA-allowed enhanced interrogation techniques. But since the release of the OLC memos has alerted AL Qaeda trainers to the current CIA menu, look for some classified additions; I am calling for the Noogie and the Atomic Wedgie, but the lawyers will want to review that.

The hilarious reads are the Greenwald and Sullivan cries of surprise. They just didn’t know it was all for show you see. Everything Bush did is ok as long as Obama does it.

Greenwald:

Since that first week, Obama has engaged in one action after the next to preserve many of the key prongs, and the essential architecture, of the Bush/Cheney abuses of executive power and civil liberties. That’s just factually true. What’s the point of closing Guantanamo if we’re going to continue to keep people indefinitely in cages with no trial in Bagram, or if we simply transport a modified version of Guantanamo justice to the U.S.? How can a President who repeatedly promised vast transparency embrace the most extremist Bush/Cheney secrecy powers? How can a person who campaigned on the vow to end “Scooter Libby justice” and restore the rule of law take one extreme step after the next to shield from judicial scrutiny some of the most serious, brutal and highest-level crimes of the last eight years?

~~~

But unless the opposition of the last eight years was really just a cynical means for opportunistically weakening and demonizing Republican opponents rather than opposing policies that one genuinely found dangerous and wrong, then the actions of Obama are leaving no other choice but to object and object strenuously.

Yup, thats all it was Glenn. The MSM and the left could care less about the policies they protested against under Bush, all they care about is that their guy gets into office. Hypocrisy ten fold…but par for the course when it comes to the left.

More:

Meanwhile, Law Professor Julian Ku notes that Obama Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal spent years arguing that military commissions generally (not merely Bush’s specific version) were oppressive and un-American (h/t). But now, thanks to Obama’s embrace of them, Katyal is going to have to defend Obama’s military commissions in court from challenge by the ACLU and other groups. At least Katyal has the excuse that defending exactly that which he spent years excoriating is his job. Obama supporters who are doing the same don’t have that excuse.

Illustrating the irrationality that is used, Obama defenders are making the following two arguments to justify what he did on military commissions:

(1) Obama had no choice because he can’t obtain convictions of accused terrorists in civilian courts because so much of the evidence was obtained by Bush’s torture and thus can’t be used;

(2) Obama’s military commissions are better than Bush’s because Obama’s commissions won’t allow evidence obtained by torture.

Aren’t those two propositions completely contradictory? If Obama’s military commissions (like civilian courts and courts-martial) won’t allow evidence obtained via torture, then why can’t he use our normal court system to try accused terrorists?

I’ll give him Glenn credit. He’s exposing the hypocrisy. Problem is the MSM will not.

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Gee, poor Mr. Greenwald gets the Casablanca Inspr Renaud award for cluelessness; or to put it another way, he couldn’t find his cluebat with two hands a magnifying glass and a map. Any conservative or republican worth his/her salt could have told this idiot five years ago that the left was full of crap, that the policies of Bush/Cheney were proper and if a democrap had proposed and implemented them, the democraps would be dancing in the street (more or less only the leftwinger who hate america would still be bemoaning any policies to protect the USA).

You guys have to read this Greenwald piece. Soooooo entertaining, with good links to the NYTimes and WaPo.

Ah so, the nutters are blaming Obi for their own interpretations of his code-word BS. They attack Ms Cali because they think shes being truthful, and spent themselves into moral bankruptcy because they believed he was lying and “really gets it”, both based on their reading of the code words.
The Obi justification you cited of using coerced testimony in the trials is actually another example of the incompetence, ignorance and anti-US hatred of the left. The military judges in the commission hearings done so far have made clear that rules excluding coerced testimony apply in all US courts, including the military commissions. The judges expect their rules regarding intel sources and methods will be upheld, but coerced testimony will be excluded. The nutters hate so much, they haven’t even checked their crap.

So he can blame the results on Bush.

” defending exactly that which he spent years excoriating is his job. Obama supporters who are doing the same don’t have that excuse.”

It is funny to watch. But as we all know the libs don’t have any principles so it shouldn’t bother them all that much.

The only thing that matters to them is power and Obie will toss them enough bones to keep their heads from exploding.

Still, it’s nice to see that some of them are having fits.

They deserve it.