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Showing Original Post only (View all)Obama’s “Dirty Wars” — and a soiled presidency [View all]
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/09/obamas_dirty_wars_and_a_soiled_presidency/This is what its come to for Barack Obama: Reality has sunk in for many Americans, who at last understand that the guy we elected on the naive expectation that he would undo the excesses of the Bush-Cheney national security state has instead made them much worse. It will be difficult, if not impossible, for Obama to escape this legacy now. He is the drone president, the assassination president, the domestic-surveillance president, whose entire administration has a professionalized passion for secrecy that makes the low-rent paranoids of the Nixon White House look like Keystone Kops. I did not suspect that I would ever again find an occasion to quote a Sarah Palin gag line, but hey: How is that hopey-changey stuff workin out for ya?
There are numerous ways of understanding this disheartening turn of events. Maybe the secret note that George W. Bush left in the top drawer of the Resolute desk on Jan. 20, 2009, contained a Manchurian Candidate-style code word that switched on the programming! Or maybe, somewhat more plausibly, the entire secret apparatus of American counterterrorism at home and abroad has become an independent and self-replicating organism, a Hydra-headed monster that cant be killed. The president himself indirectly took that tack on Friday, when he tackled questions about the surveillance revelations for the first time, during a supposedly unrelated press conference.
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What Wyden was saying to me, says Scahill, was that whether its the kill program or its domestic surveillance or its certain secret aspects of the Patriot Act, there are laws that the American people can go online and read, and reasonable people will interpret those in relatively the same way. And then theres a second set of laws, which consist of the way the administration has interpreted what those laws say. So what hes saying to me is that on any of these issues, if I could tell you how theyve interpreted what you believe a law to say, it would shock you.
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We've gone through the looking glass.
"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean neither more nor less."
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Emotional responses, of course, are perceived as manufactured in others
woo me with science
Jun 2013
#73
Yes, that's exactly what I wrote. Thank you for confirming what I said about the folks
Number23
Jun 2013
#88
PRAISE JESUS! Love it when people start boring, pointless conversations for no reason
Number23
Jun 2013
#90
Wingers would LOVE for his presidency to be "soiled" it isn't, screw the Carlyle Group
uponit7771
Jun 2013
#4
This sounds like the best plan to gurentee of increasing terrorist numbers not to mention the
joelz
Jun 2013
#17
We are now effectively being governed by what amounts to "secret signing statements."
PSPS
Jun 2013
#18
This is bullshit. This paranoid crap is going to flush our 2014 chances down the tube -
appacom
Jun 2013
#40
Maybe Obama Should Have Thought About That Before He Claimed To Be The Transparent President
cantbeserious
Jun 2013
#45
How Would You Prove That The Obama Presidency Has Been The Most Transparent - Problem Is You Cannot
cantbeserious
Jun 2013
#54
Actually, you can. His promises regarding transparency, like all others, were tracked.
stevenleser
Jun 2013
#94
Ad Hominen Attack On My Thinking - Obama Did Claim He Would Have A Transparent Administration
cantbeserious
Jun 2013
#99
Too True - The American People Have Been Cowed To Submission - The Oligarchs Have Won
cantbeserious
Jun 2013
#60