Salon Radio: Charlie Savage on Obama's civil liberties record
(updated w/transcript) <http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/>Glenn Greenwald http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/radio/2009/07/02/savage/index1.html Back in February, The New York Times' Charlie Savage -- who won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing Bush's use of signing statements to break the law -- <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/us/politics/18policy.html?_r=1&hp>wrote an article reporting that, after a first-week Executive Order from Obama banning torture, "the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for other major elements of its predecessor's approach to fighting Al Qaeda," which is "prompting growing worry among civil liberties groups and a sense of vindication among supporters of Bush-era policies." About Savage's February article, <http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/18/savage/>I wrote: While believing that Savage's article is of great value in sounding the right alarm bells, I think that he paints a slightly more pessimistic picture on the civil liberties front than is warranted by the evidence thus far (though only slightly). In retrospect, Savage was right and I was wrong about that: his February article was <http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/17/transparency/index.html>far more <http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/23/herbert/index.html>prescient than premature. Today, in the NYT, Savage <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/us/02gitmo.html?hpw>has another article examining the same topic, headlined: "To Critics, New Policy on Terror Looks Old." In it, he explores this question: "Has [Obama], on issues related to fighting terrorism, turned out to be little different from his predecessor?" A key point from Savage's article -- which I've tried to <http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/19/obama/>emphasize several times -- is that whereas these policies were supported by roughly half the population (Republicans) in the Bush era [NO WAY!!!--MCM] but vehemently opposed by the other half (at least ostensibly), Obama's embrace of them is now causing a large part of the other half of the population (Democrats) to support them as well, thus entrenching them as bipartisan consensus: In any case, Jack Balkin, a Yale Law School professor, said Mr. Obama's ratification of the basic outlines of the surveillance and detention policies he inherited would reverberate for generations. By bestowing bipartisan acceptance on them, Mr. Balkin said, Mr. Obama is consolidating them as entrenched features of government. "What we are watching," Mr. Balkin said, "is a liberal, centrist, Democratic version of the construction of these same governing practices." That was the point former Bush DOJ lawyer Jack Goldsmith <http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=1e733cac-c273-48e5-9140-80443ed1f5e2&p=1>made when arguing last month that Obama is actually strengthening (rather than "changing") the Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism even more effectively than Bush did by entrenching those policies in law and causing unprincipled Democrats to switch from pretending to oppose them to supporting them, thus transforming them into bipartisan dogma. Savage is my guest on Salon Radio today to talk about Obama's record on terrorism and civil liberties, and the way -- as Savage describes it -- Obama has embraced and replicated many of the core "War on Terror" polices of the Bush presidency, particularly in the form they took in Bush's second term (even as Obama largely purports to reject the Bush theories of unilateral presidential power). We also discuss how so many people who previously criticized these polices rather vocally when pursued by Bush are either silent or actively supportive now that Obama is defending them. There simply aren't any better reporters on these issues than Savage, and I highly recommend listening to his very nuanced and well-informed views on these topics. The discussion is roughly 20 minutes in length and can be heard by clicking PLAY on the recorder below. A transcript will be posted shortly. UPDATE: The transcript is now posted <http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/radio/2009/07/02/savage/index1.html>here. On a note related to all of this, the Obama administration -- which has repeatedly delayed releasing a less redacted version of the 2004 report of the CIA's Inspector General that aggressively challenged both the legality and efficacy of torture -- <http://washingtonindependent.com/49598/breaking-obama-administration-withholds-cia-torture-report-until-august-31>today announced that it would delay its disclosure by at least another seven weeks, to August 31, 2009. We're in the New Era of Tranpsarency. -- Glenn Greenwald --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to Mark Crispin Miller's "News From Underground" newsgroup. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to newsfromunderground-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com OR go to http://groups.google.com/group/newsfromunderground and click on the "Unsubscribe or change membership" link in the yellow bar at the top of the page, then click the "Unsubscribe" button on the next page. 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