Say It Ain't So Already

The Anatomy of the Death of An Obama Promise

November 23, 2009 at 4:22 PM Leave a comment

The fall of Greg Craig.

This is an article about how the Obama administration essentially succumbed to pressure from the Republicans not to release photos of suspected terrorists being tortured in U.S. custody or to quickly close Guantanamo.  The most shocking thing is that Obama and Rahm, et al., were totally caught off guard by the GOP outcry and when it happened, they didn’t have a a plan as to how to deal with it, so they just caved.

Obama needed to regain control quickly, and he started by jettisoning liberal positions he had been prepared to accept — and had even okayed — just weeks earlier. First to go was the release of the pictures of detainee abuse. Days later, Obama sided against Craig again, ending the suspension of Bush’s extrajudicial military commissions. The following week, Obama pre-empted an ongoing debate among his national-security team and embraced one of the most controversial of Bush’s positions: the holding of detainees without charges or trial, something he had promised during the campaign to reject.

Entry filed under: President Barack H. Obama and Co., Torture, Wars. Tags: .