1. “Petraeus and Multinational Force Iraq (MNF-I) Commander Gen. Ray Odierno have submitted assessments of Iraq combat-troop withdrawal plans to President Barack Obama based on the premise that his 16-month withdrawal plan would pose significantly greater risk to “security gains” than the 23-month plan they favor.
But a senior commander in Iraq appeared to contradict that premise last week by declaring that security gains in the Shi’ite provinces of Iraq are “permanent,” and a field commander in Iraq says there is no objective basis for any Petraeus-Odierno finding that Obama’s plan carries greater risk than their 23-month plan.
Maj. Gen. Michael Oates, U.S. commander for the eight southern provinces of Iraq, denied in remarks to reporters Feb. 12 that the security gains in that region were fragile, contrary to the premise that Odierno has publicly asserted.
…
Oates said he had already reassigned combat forces in the region to non-combat missions, either training or economic development, despite grumbling by soldiers.”
http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=14269
2. “Lyndon B. Johnson’s policy of Great Society spending and the Vietnam War is credited with the rising American inflation that persisted until checked by President Reagan’s supply-side policy.
In Johnson’s time, the American economy and the U.S. dollar were strong, and there was no current account deficit. Yet LBJ’s policy of guns and butter did long-term harm.
The Bush-Obama 21st-century policy of guns and butter makes LBJ look like a piker. The 2009 and 2010, federal budget deficits will be monstrous even without guns. But Obama is exiting (apparently) the Iraq War in order to start two, possibly three, more wars.“
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=14268
3. Critique them? How about arresting them for war crimes?
“Justice Dept. to Critique Interrogation Methods Backed by Bush Team
The Justice Department’s ethics office is in the final stages of a report that sharply criticizes Bush administration lawyers who wrote legal opinions justifying waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, according to department and Congressional officials.
The report, by H. Marshall Jarrett, who leads the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, would be the first accounting for legal advice that endorsed interrogation techniques historically considered by the United States and other Western countries to be illegal torture. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. will have to decide whether to approve the findings and whether to make them public.“
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/us/17justice.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
4. “Concerning the pending dispute over Bush’s wildly broad assertions of executive privilege in order to prevent his aides (such as Karl Rove) from having to disclose information to Congress, Savage quotes Obama’s White House counsel Greg Craig as follows:
Addressing the executive-privilege dispute, Mr. Craig said: “The president is very sympathetic to those who want to find out what happened. But he is also mindful as president of the United States not to do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency. So for that reason, he is urging both sides of this to settle.”
That may be the most revealing quote of the article. If — as virtually all Bush critics agree — the Bush presidency ushered in a massive and dangerous expansion of executive power, isn’t it necessary, by definition, to scale back some of those powers — i.e., to “undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency” — if those abuses are to be reversed? The cynical view has long been that Obama will not, on his own, meaningfully uproot Bush’s executive power expansions because political officials do not get into office and then start voluntarily giving up their own power. Craig’s statement constitutes a virtual affirmation of the cynic’s view of Obama’s intentions.
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Rather, the criticisms are grounded in the opposite premise: these cases which have provoked objections are all cases where Obama has already taken affirmative actions to preserve and defend Bush/Cheney policies. In the State Secrets case, for example, the Obama DOJ explicitly rejected the ACLU’s offer for more time, declaring they do not need or want more time, that they have had ample time to review the issues and have decided that they believe in the Bush/Cheney theory of what the State Secrets privilege allows.
…
There are people who believe that Barack Obama is kind, just and good, and thus are going to have a hard time believing that he’s embracing some of the most abusive Bush/Cheney policies even when he does it right in front of their faces. Others aren’t ever going to object to what Obama does in this area, because they believe (as Bush supporters believed about Bush) that there’s nothing really wrong if Obama wields these same powers since Obama is a kind-hearted ruler and therefore can be trusted not to abuse these powers. As DCLaw pointed out yesterday, people with that swooning mentality can’t be reached because they don’t really believe in the basic premise on which the country was founded, as enunciated by James Madison in Federalist 51:
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
We don’t place faith in the Goodness and kindness of specific leaders — even Barack Obama — to secretly exercise powers for our own Good. We rely instead on transparency and on constant compulsory limits on those powers as imposed by the Constitution, by other branches, and by law. That’s what it means to be a nation of laws and not men. When Obama embraces the same abusive and excessive powers that Bush embraced, it isn’t better because it’s Obama rather than Bush wielding that power. It’s the same. And that’s true even if one “trusts” Obama more than Bush.
A genuine reversal of the last eight years — meaning something more than just sand-papering the roughest edges — will come not from having a kinder-hearted and more magnanimous leader, but only from a restoration of the legal and Constitutional framework that makes a President’s magnanimity irrelevant, since his powers are exercised transparently and with real checks and limits. It remains very much an open question whether that will happen. There are some preliminary signs that it could, and some much more concrete signs that it won’t — at least not without a very concerted fight.“
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
