Fri 23 Jan 2009
Bush repeal of America ends
Posted by admin under Balkers
[22] Comments
The Guardian, Friday 23 January 2009
Barack Obama embarked on the wholesale deconstruction of George Bush’s war on terror, shutting down the CIA’s secret prison network, banning torture and rendition, and calling for a new set of rules for detainees. The repudiation of Bush’s thinking on national security yesterday also saw the appointment of a high-powered envoy to the Middle East.
Obama’s decision to permanently shut down the CIA’s clandestine interrogation centres went far beyond the widely anticipated move to wind down the Guantánamo Bay detention centre within a year.
He cast his scrapping of the legal apparatus set up by Bush as a way for America to reclaim the moral high ground in the fight against al-Qaida.
“We are not, as I said during the inauguration, going to continue with the false choice between our safety and our ideals,” Obama said at the signing ceremony. “We intend to win this fight. We are going to win it on our own terms.”
In a sign of the sweeping rejection of the legal standards set by Bush, officials briefing reporters at the White House yesterday said the new administration would not be guided by any of the opinions on torture and detainees issued by the justice department after 11 September 2001.
Instead, Obama, in three executive orders, renewed the US commitment to the Geneva convention on the treatment of detainees. All detainees will be registered by the International Committee for the Red Cross, in another departure of past practice under the Bush administration.
A group of 16 retired admirals and generals, in a meeting organised by Human Rights First, said the move would restore America’s moral authority in the world, and strengthen its national security. “President Obama has rejected the false choice between national security and our ideals,” they said.
As expected, Obama made good on his campaign promise to shut down Guantánamo, issuing an executive order to close the camp within a year. He also ordered a taskforce, led by the attorney general and the secretaries of defence, state and homeland security, to review the intelligence and information on each detainee and to determine whether they can be released or put on trial.
He called for a review on the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo to be completed within 30 days.
Another order directs the CIA to follow the US army field manual on interrogations, which bars such techniques as waterboarding.
Obama also directed a taskforce to study and report back within 180 days on whether new guidelines were required for intelligence officials, beyond those set down by the military. Administration officials were adamant that the review was not intended as a back door to reinstate torture. “There is not a secret annexe that allows us to bring enhanced interrogation techniques back,” said one.
The final order mandates a review of the case of Ali Saleh Khalah al-Marri, a Qatari, the last enemy combatant on US soil, who is being held in a naval brig in Charleston, South Carolina.
Obama followed up the burst of activity on detention policy by announcing that his administration would put resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the top of his agenda, “actively and aggressively” seeking a comprehensive peace deal. As a sign of that intent, he confirmed that former senator George Mitchell, a veteran US mediator, would be his Middle East envoy.
Obama, who had been criticised for his silence during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, set out a new position that, while still leaning towards Israel, was more even-handed than that under Bush. He called for Hamas to stop firing rockets at Israel, but also said that Israel must “complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza”
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
22 Responses to “ Bush repeal of America ends ”
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Welcome to Balkingpoints.com!
This Guardian UK article is up as a mock example, while the site is constructed and initially publicized.
Since they mention it however…
George Bush was a disaster and embarrassment as president of the United States – personal apologies from this quarter, to the world.
Keep in mind that Bush actually lost the 2000 election to Al Gore, on fewer votes. He used backdoor maneuvers and his brother (then Florida governor) Jeb’s state party apparatus, to tilt the tally of states barely into his favor, then got Reagan’s Supreme Court appointees to install him – in what was essentially a coup.
My point is that he never had majority support of Americans, other than defeating (again barely) a weak opponent in John Kerry, in the 2004 election. In the end, his presidency went down in flames – finishing with
the lowest approval rating of any president on modern record, including
the disgraced Richard Nixon.
So, most of us knew for most of this decade, we’d taken a wrong turn.
In full disclosure, your site author is a longstanding Clinton progressive, working on Bill’s 1992 and 1996 campaigns, and again in 2008 for Hillary.
But when Obama in his first 2 days in office, tore out Bush’s subversion of our values in pursuing a handful of extremists, I felt we got our sanity back as a nation.
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Clinton in my opinion was instrumental in the downward slide of the economy when he and the Congress conspired to shove NAFTA GATT and a host of other Free Trade outrages down America’s throat. We are new reaping the bitter fruit of thoseaffronts to our country.
His involvement in the Balkans is no better that the outright aggression of the Bush Administration in Iraq and Afghanistan. Replete with phony eveidence of genocide and massacres. What Clinton has down in the Balkans will forever remain a black spot on America’s image and history as well as our brutal conquest and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
jsbar
Welcome aboard JS. To your earlier question about content, it will be
issues of some international impact – source being what’s important
to that Balker. Goal of course is to attract writers and voices from
all over the world, and I think we’ll eventually cover the gamut of
world matters.
On Bill Clinton; don’t know what motive he had to manufacture genocide evidence in Kosovo. Certainly there was an awful civil war in the former Yugoslavia, with former dictator Milosevic tried for war crimes in The Hague (http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/Articles-trial.htm), and Richard Holbrook succeeding in the Dayton peace accords in getting a cease-fire in Bosnia, which has held to this day with U.N. forces.
On NAFTA / GATT; Obama did flipflop like a fish on it during the campaign. I don’t think he has a core on it, and our future posture on it will be subject to pulls on him from the various sides. The Clintons believe in free trade – but there is a big issue in the imbalance in wages and labor standards, that tends to gut industry in the 1st world and get it relocated, to someplace where those are both abysmally low.
Good reason why we need to connect across borders, simply as citizens of the world…
;^)
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Roy G says:
“On Bill Clinton; don’t know what motive he had to manufacture genocide evidence in Kosovo. Certainly there was an awful civil war in the former Yugoslavia, with former dictator Milosevic tried for war crimes in The Hague (http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/Articles-trial.htm), and Richard Holbrook succeeding in the Dayton peace accords in getting a cease-fire in Bosnia, which has held to this day with U.N. forces.”
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The die was cast for intervention in Kosovo (and all of the Balkins)during the Bush the Elder Administration. Clinton was just following through on many things that had been predetermined.
Establishing the Camp Bondsteel Outpost, the largest US military base in the Balkans, was the intent. There are a number of oil/gas piplines being constructed just south of Kosovo in Macedonia by by competing interests, one America/EU and the other by Russian interests.
The civil war in Yogoslavia was instigated by the EU/US with Germany as the lead provocatur, being the first country to recognize Slovenia as independent, effectively unilaterely severing it from the FRY.
Then the same Neo-Liberal economic free trade, free market capitalism was forced on the rest of the countries of the FRY which destroyed the Federal Republic’s economy, causing further tensions with the diverse ethnic groups in the Fry that heretofore had gooten along well with each other.
The US and it’s EU accomplices knew that an intact Yugoslavia would not be an easy mark and would oppose expanding the empire into Eastern Europe, so it had to be broken up and that is what happened.
Milosevic was a substantial stumblig block to their plans so he had to be demonized and deposed, both of which they accomplished with the help of Richard Holbrook.
The Dayton Accordes were an ultimatum which Holbrook and company, Hashim Thaci and the Albanian gangsters, imposed on Milosevic and the Leaders of Croatia and Bosnia. Nobody was happy with Dayton except the Albright, Holbrook and of course the Clinton cabal.
The Ramboullette (sp) agreement was a military ultimatum, again in collaboration with Hashim Thaci and the gang, for Milosevic to completely surrender all of Yugoslavia to US/Nato occupation. it was a complete capitulation of their country to the North Atlantic Alliance or face airstrikes throughout FRY until such time the country was surrendered.
This of course Milosevic would not agree to and the illegal aggression against the former Republic of Yugoslavia began in earnest. The US stooge Yeltsin finally sold Milosevic out when it became obvious that Serbia and Milosevic would not surrender and the US began to suffer casualties that to this very day they deny.
The Serbian war museum is packed full of destroyed NATO/US aicraft wreckage including a F-117 Stealth the the US foolishly thought was invisible to radar.
Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo are now basket cases. Serbia is the only part left of the FRY that has not been taken over by NATO/EU/US bureaucrats and has faired iminently better than the rest of the FRY.
But the US/EU continually coerces and threatens them with sanctions if they do not turn over all their alleged war criminals like Gen Mladic and elect pro western leaders.
Holbrook should hang his head in shame as to the wreckage he has left in the Balkans.
Afghanistan has all the makings of an even worse disater.
obama will ensure that the united states will be even more in debt than we are now.
prepair yourselves for the upcoming disaster that will begin after the temporary rebound of the stock market. if you do not prepair for the upcoming disaster in the next 2 or 3 years, its your own dumb fault.
OBAMA
Is what Nevel Chamberlin was to the Nazis and now Obama to the world muslimiac fanatics.
President Bush Won algore -0-
Welcome aboard marcuss, and the state of Minnesota apparently…
1 month in, Obama still has some kumbaying to do it would seem. ;^)
I too, am concerned about how the future will be with the stock markets in 2 to 3 years. I’m about as prepared as possible, I guess. How does one actually prepare for the unknown? I’d like to see things improve remarkably and this President turn this country around where it should be, where we were when we were respected and looked up to by too many other countries but I doubt that will happen.
jsbar has a very interesting account of the Balkan crisis; I have no heard the story told this way before, and although I have no problem accepting that government forces worked in devious or underhanded ways to interfere in foreign countries, I would be interested to see some references and/or citations to support these claims.
Not only for this article, but also for the credibility of the site in general, citation or supporting links/references should be encouraged. Either way, interesting post, and great site!
Welcome, yourheadasplode (not yet I hope… ;^)
Links are always good for documentation & support. Registered B/P members can add them from their Dashboard account area, into new Balks, Balkbacks or can edit them into remarks already made. Email me at Roy(at)Balkingoints(com) if any questions!
“Instead, Obama, in three executive orders, renewed the US commitment to the Geneva convention on the treatment of detainees.”
For why?
The Geneva Convention has been such a comfort to our soldiers all over the world, I’m sure all the veterans keep a copy of it on their nightstands by the gun and Bible.
Whenever did the freaking Geneva Convention protect one soldier or citizen of the US?
Ask the Viet Name vets how comforted they were by the Geneva Convention when the doors of the black boxes they were kept in for weeks at the time slammed. How comforted they were when they bandaged and nurse their brothers after little nice convensation with the Viet Cong, or while they were wondering where their brothers went after never returning from those visits. And while they picked rat feces out of their food.
I’m sure the US soldiers on the Bataan Death March were sorely comforted by the Geneva Convention…or the 3,000 soldiers that starved to death in Korea when they eventually died. Or our sailors that died or watched their brothers die at Pearl Harbor.
Nor were our soldiers that were beheaded, torched, and had their bodies and body parts drug through the streets in the Middle East.
The Geneva Convention is a farce…and holding the US to it’s standards when not one other country that has signed it has ever honored it is total whimpocrapic hypocrisy!
War is the real Farce! Peace Energy for the future! Maybe that sounds to simplistic, but its the rich and powerful that want us to keep working for the current ’slavery industrial system’ , i mean cmon , why do we keep perpetuating the machine? Even after all the advances weve made ,cars , computers, dishwashers,etc.. we middleclass american people still dont have a lot of basic human rights like healthcare, good public transportation, dentistry, cuz its so damn expensive, and then the corporations shove all their prducts down our throats, and the pills, something is wrong with the bigger picture, the system workis real well for the top 20% or so , they at least keep getting richer and can afford jetsetting, , , , the rich politicians would have us believe that we are fighting a war for ‘Our American Freedoms and ‘american interests’ , , , but the poor people are the ones who are doing the fight and living thru all the hell,,,this system suks!
BY SUCKING UP AND NEGOTIATING WITH TERRORISTS, OBAMA GIVES HIS FRIENDS THE UPPER HAND
Welcome aboard Keith. Caps off please…
Welcome back Sam.
I find that people whom advocate a perpetual-warrior policy, have usually never fought in one themselves. As the Obama/Clinton change back to sanity begins to rack up foreign policy successes, the pro-Bush / attack-them-all crowd will become marginalized and irrelevant IMO. The disaster that was the Bush Regime, is over.
Maybe the BUSH regime disaster is over! But what about the costs and just the cost to the North American peoples who are now suffering the consequences of nearly a decade of uncontrolled market capitalism acerbated by the former republican president?
I would say the global recession left in the wake of anti-regulatory policies of the Bush II regime, is the overarching matter for everyone right now. Our Balks on Dubai and Surat, India certainly show a tsunami-like ripple effect. In this century we are ever increasingly, one economy.
Which I argue is ultimately to the good for regular working people the world over, the more we see our aligned interests in corporate regulation and labor rights, and the more we connect on these matters across borders. The age of a global labor movement is coming, and it’s good for the stability of both workers and owners. Protectionism is not the way to prosperity in this technologically-shrunken and interwoven world IMO. Free & fair trade, can create new layers of growth and wealth on multiple sides and fronts – as it has already proven now for centuries.
Equally clearly, we cannot let it nor multi-national corporations, run amok. We see now from this current crisis, how those must be regulated in sensible ways that leave workers shielded from the fallout of unchecked risk-taking, greed, fraudulent corporate practices, moving factories and shifting industrial trends. Only governments, can be the governor. Only citizens, can require their governments to step up and do the job.
Capitalism is like a nuclear reactor. Ignite it and it will throw off massive yields that benefit everyone around it. Fail to limit it’s burn, it melts down and kills everyone around it – including it’s owners & managers. Meltdown is exactly what began to occur worldwide in 2008, after 3 decades of laissez faire economic policy in America that began with Ronald Reagan in 1981 – only interrupted by Bill Clinton in the ’90’s. But the simpletons are deposed now, and the intellectuals who know how to strike the proper balances, are back in.
Welcome aboard baldeagle. (…see what happens when you get me started? ;^)
Roy
This site posts many comments that I find informative, and most important, free of the left-wing media slant. That is until I get to yours, ” I would say the global recession left in the wake of anti-regulatory policies of the Bush II regime…” Does this statement imply that the Bush administration has sole responsibility for the economic crisis, or do Clinton and the US Congress share the burden with the former administration? If this is your opinion, then say so. If it is fact with a foundation, then please back it up with a reference. Otherwise you negate the benefit of this site by lowering it to the standards of say, “The New York Times.” I want honest thoughts and opinions, but I also require accurate factual information where it is necessary. It’s imperative I know the difference so please, references where applicable.
Welcome aboard Gary.
…do you mean that after 8 years of the Bush Regime, can it still be Clinton’s fault?
No, I would say. (connotes opinion… ;^)
With regard to that and also your phobia of left-wing slant, Balkingpoints
is a global perspectives forum that reaches far beyond the failed Republican era in America.
The world rejected Bush and the party that rubberstamped him, years
ago. America caught up with that view, in the last two election cycles.
A majority has deposed them (fact).
With Obama’s election we’re moving on now to a new global era, that
I regard the GOP as currently comprised, to be increasingly irrelevant in. Your site author is a declared Progressive, which I stated within this very Balk / the first one ever posted to Balkingpoints. See Balkback #1 above.
But plenty of sites do provide a journalism false-front, which in reality
are loaded with opinion they can’t substantiate, because history has repeatedly proven them wrong. Fox News for example, pays nearly all of
it’s voices to maintain that government is the problem – cut taxes on the wealthy and cut regulation, and prosperity trickles down to all.
America tried that under Reagan/Bush for 12 years and Bush II for 8, out
of the 28 years from 1981-2008. Now the banking system is near collapse, millions have lost their jobs and millions have lost their homes. Millions more are in fear of either or both. Around 100 million Americans are medically uninsured or underinsured, and 1 illness away from financial
ruin. Trickle-Down, indeed. Categorical failure and big lie.
So they’d be an excellent venue to direct your complaint to… ;^)
Keep your change, Roy, we want our country back. Fascism may be OK with you but we aren’t going to take it and no amount of name-calling, lies and propaganda are going to work. America is waking up. ACORN is on the run, Obamacare is revealed as the fraud that it always was, the truth is coming out despite ongoing efforts of people like you to supress it and demonize anyone who is bold enough to tell it.
Is there anyone on your site who knows what they’re talking about? I haven’t found anyone yet and I’m just about tired of looking.
HEY KEITH, SHOUT IT!
Roy, what flavor Kool-Aid is it you drink again? Where do you get your “balking points”? Daily Kos, Democratic Underground?
Al Gore lost by a wide margin despite his efforts to close the gap through voter fraud during the recounts and also by using the courts to disenfranchise military members. You’re still stuck in the fantasy that Gore won? No wonder you’re so confused about everything else!
As for Yugoslavia, I suppose you think it was OK that a bloodthirsty dictator tried to prevent people from enjoying self-determination? How is it that you think the U.S. caused that mess in the Balkans again? You’re big on claims but short on facts to back it all up. Who, exactly, is it you say is at fault? Bush I? That’s a new level of Bush Derangement Syndrome, for sure.
Quoted as “It’s all Bush(II)’s fault, unless it was Bush(I)’s fault.”
yeahRITE!
Get a clue, Roy & associates. Or don’t. Enough Amerians seem to be waking up and seeing through the propaganda and lies – not soon enough to prevent 4 years of damage but at least in 2010 they’ll start setting it right!
Thanks for your remarks Gregor. I have to wonder though, if you could even define fascism.
“Al Gore lost by a wide margin” — okaaay… ;^)