My Gift to the Obama Presidency

[DarrinS]

This is sure to piss off board libs

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...s_opinion_main

Barack Obama may not realize it, but I may have just helped save his presidency. How? By winning a drawn-out fight to protect his powers as commander in chief to wage war and keep Americans safe.

He sure didn't make it easy. When Mr. Obama took office a year ago, receiving help from one of the lawyers involved in the development of George W. Bush's counterterrorism policies was the furthest thing from his mind. Having won a great electoral victory, the new president promised a quick about-face. He rejected "as false the choice between our safety and our ideals" and moved to restore the law-enforcement system as the first line of defense against a hardened enemy devoted to killing Americans.

In office only one day, Mr. Obama ordered the shuttering of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, followed later by the announcement that he would bring terrorists to an Illinois prison. He terminated the Central Intelligence Agency's ability to use "enhanced interrogations techniques" to question al Qaeda operatives. He stayed the military trial, approved by Congress, of al Qaeda leaders. He ultimately decided to transfer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the planner of the 9/11 attacks, to a civilian court in New York City, and automatically treated Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, as a criminal suspect (not an illegal enemy combatant). Nothing better could have symbolized the new president's determination to take us back to a Sept. 10, 2001, approach to terrorism.

Part of Mr. Obama's plan included hounding those who developed, approved or carried out Bush policies, despite the enormous pressures of time and cir stance in the months immediately after the September 11 attacks. Although career prosecutors had previously reviewed the evidence and determined that no charges are warranted, last year Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a new prosecutor to re-investigate the CIA's detention and interrogation of al Qaeda leaders.

In my case, he let loose the ethics investigators of the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) to smear my reputation and that of Jay Bybee, who now sits as a federal judge on the court of appeals in San Francisco. Our crime? While serving in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in the weeks and months after 9/11, we answered in the form of memoranda extremely difficult questions from the leaders of the CIA, the National Security Council and the White House on when interrogation methods crossed the line into prohibited acts of torture.

Rank bias and sheer incompetence infused OPR's investigation. OPR attorneys, for example, omitted a number of precedents that squarely supported the approach in the memoranda and undermined OPR's preferred outcome. They declared that no Americans have a right of self-defense against a criminal prosecution, not even when they or their government agents attempt to stop terrorist attacks on the United States. OPR claimed that Congress enjoyed full authority over wartime strategy and tactics, despite decades of Justice Department opinions and practice defending the president's commander-in-chief power. They accused us of violating ethical standards without ever defining them. They concocted bizarre conspiracy theories about which they never asked us, and for which they had no evidence, even though we both patiently—and with no legal obligation to do so—sat through days of questioning.

OPR's investigation was so biased, so flawed, and so beneath the Justice Department's own standards that last week the department's ranking civil servant and senior ethicist, David Margolis, completely rejected its recommendations.

Attorney General Holder could have stopped this sorry mess earlier, just as his predecessor had tried to do. OPR slow-rolled Attorney General Michael Mukasey by refusing to deliver a draft of its report until the 2008 Christmas and New Year holidays. OPR informed Mr. Mukasey of its intention to release the report on Jan. 12, 2009, without giving me or Judge Bybee the chance to see it—as was our right and as we'd been promised.

Mr. Mukasey and Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip found so many errors in the report that they told OPR that the entire enterprise should be abandoned. OPR decided to run out the clock and push the investigation into the lap of the Obama administration. It would have been easy for Mr. Holder to concur with his predecessors—in fact, it was critical that he do so to preserve the Justice Department's impartiality. Instead the new attorney general let OPR's investigators run wild. Only Mr. Margolis's rejection of the OPR report last week forced the Obama administration to drop its ethics charges against Bush legal advisers.

Why bother fighting off an administration -bent on finding scapegoats for its policy disagreements with the last president? I could have easily decided to hide out, as others have. Instead, I wrote numerous articles (several published in this newspaper) and three books explaining and defending presidential control of national security policy. I gave dozens of speeches and media appearances, where I confronted critics of the administration's terrorism policies. And, most importantly, I was lucky to receive the outstanding legal counsel of Miguel Estrada, one of the nation's finest defense attorneys, to attack head-on and without reservation, each and every one of OPR's mistakes, misdeeds and acts of malfeasance.

I did not do this to win any popularity contests, least of all those held in the faculty lounge. I did it to help our president—President Obama, not Bush. Mr. Obama is fighting three wars simultaneously in Iraq, Afghanistan, and against al Qaeda. He will call upon the men and women serving under his command to make choices as hard as the ones we faced. They cannot meet those challenges with clear minds if they believe that a bevy of prosecutors, congressional committees and media critics await them when they return from the battlefield.

This is no idle worry. In 2005, a Navy Seal team dropped into Afghanistan encountered goat herders who clearly intended to inform the Taliban of their whereabouts. The team leader ordered them released, against his better military judgment, because of his worries about the media and political attacks that would follow.

In less than an hour, more than 80 Taliban fighters attacked and killed all but one member of the Seal team and 16 Americans on a helicopter rescue mission. If a president cannot, or will not, protect the men and women who fight our nation's wars, they will follow the same risk-averse at udes that invited the 9/11 attacks in the first place.

Without a vigorous commander-in-chief power at his disposal, Mr. Obama will struggle to win any of these victories. But that is where OPR, playing a junior varsity CIA, wanted to lead us. Ending the Justice Department's ethics witch hunt not only brought an unjust persecution to an end, but it protects the president's cons utional ability to fight the enemies that threaten our nation today.

[jack sommerset]

Obama owes him a thank you note.

[ElNono]

Sounds like a butthurt sore loser to me...

Honestly, I don't see why anyone would be pissed at him at this point. He's no longer in power, and really, his words no longer carry any weight in decision-making...

[balli]

Cool story bro.

[ChumpDumper]

Sounds like a butthurt sore loser to me...

Absolutely.

can't even use the word "waterboard."

[George Gervin's Afro]

They concocted bizarre conspiracy theories about which they never asked us, and for which they had no evidence

sounds like the resident dead enders and Obama

[Darrin]

I wish someone would round-up the idiots, liars, and criminals in the Bush administration. I'd love to go un-Cons utional on their ass.

[DarrinS]

I wish someone would round-up the idiots, liars, and criminals in the Bush administration. I'd love to go un-Cons utional on their ass.

How's that workin out for ya?

[George Gervin's Afro]

How's that workin out for ya?

Obama lies bad. lies about war ok.

[DarrinS]

Obama lies bad. lies about war ok.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp

[ChumpDumper]

http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp

Still trying to deflect blame from Bush.

The buck stops anywhere but with him.

[DarrinS]

Still trying to deflect blame from Bush.

The buck stops anywhere but with him.

He was a horrible president. And he did say things that turned out not to be true -- as did so many others.

Were they lying, or just saying things they believed to be true?

[Darrin]

He was a horrible president. And he did say things that turned out not to be true -- as did so many others.

Were they lying, or just saying things they believed to be true?

They were lying. Cheney has a time-machine or there is no such terrorist arrested because of enhanced interrogations. The supposed arrested detainee was arrested 4 months before the torture.

[ChumpDumper]

He was a horrible president. And he did say things that turned out not to be true -- as did so many others.

Were they lying, or just saying things they believed to be true?

Either could be true.

Did Bush decide to go to war?

Yes or no.

[boutons_deux]

"just saying things they believed to be true"

They were lying. dubya and his entire administration took office with the overwhelming (but hidden) priority to invade Iraq for oil. Wolfie said so, Greenspan said so. dubya's first commerce secy said Iraq was talked about in the very first cabinet meeting.

9/11 was the pretext, coupled witth the country's naive trust in the Repugs, that gave the Repugs a open road into Iraq. The WMD and all the other reasons-du-jour were ALL BULL LIES.

Read up on what's coming out in UK's inquiry into the run up to the war. You won't read about in US press.

yawn, old stuff here. You wrongies will never admit the Repugs invaded a country in a naked resource grab, and got away with the crime.

But you have to hand it the Repugs, they sure know where to find the lawyers like Gonzo, Yoo, Bybee who are de able yes men first, and only nominal lawyers in their respect for the law and truth.

[boutons_deux]

Torture architect ‘distorts’ investigation timeline to blame Obama | Raw Story

In WSJ op-ed, Yoo claims he ‘helped save Obama’s presidency’


Recently cleared from criminal prosecution, President Bush's "torture architect" John Yoo criticized Obama on Wednesday for allegedly ordering a "witch hunt" against him. But the timeline reflects that the investigation of his transgressions began under the former president, not the current one.

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal Wednesday led "My Gift to the Obama Presidency," Yoo declared that he "may have just helped save [Obama's] presidency. How? By winning a drawn-out fight to protect his powers as commander in chief to wage war and keep Americans safe."

( protect? ha! invent powers that escaped the checks and balances. Basically, the head/Black Addington Presidency
is not bound by checks and balances, is not answerable to anyonw )


The Justice Department's Office of Personal Responsibility recently declared that Yoo and fellow torture architect Jay Bybee should not be disbarred, instead merely issuing them a rhetorical slap for "professional misconduct" and "poor judgment" for ignoring established case law.

Doubling down on the efficacy of his decisions, Yoo defended Bush lawyers and squared the blame for his reproach on Obama for "hounding those who developed, approved or carried out Bush policies" and criticized the "[r]ank bias and sheer incompetence" of OPR's investigation.

( so there you have it, Yoo and Bybee weren't supposed to figure out to apply/stay within the law but how to do what they were told )

But the investigation was underway by April 2008, when The Associated Press reported that the "Justice Department is investigating whether agency lawyers improperly advised the military it could use harsh interrogation methods."
The main catalyst of the investigation, AP reported, was a 2003 memo "written by then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo" which "said the president's wartime power as commander in chief would not be limited by U.N. treaties against torture."

Unresolved by the end of the Bush administration, it was passed on to Obama, and just last week the DOJ cleared Yoo of prosecution charges.

Joel Mathis of the Philadephia Weekly called Yoo "purely and completely dishonest" in the op-ed, pointing out that "the OPR investigation started during the Bush Administration." He added that Yoo "distorts and politicizes the situation to create an entirely false narrative of his own victimization."

"Get this straight," Mathis continued. "The so-called 'smear job' came under the Republican president. The so-called 'vindication' came under the Democratic president."

In the op-ed, Yoo rebuked Obama's alleged "determination to take us back to a Sept. 10, 2001, approach to terrorism" by banning the CIA from using severe interrogation techniques, ordering the closure of Guantanamo Bay and subjecting suspected terrorists to the American justice system.

Watchdog groups and civil libertarians believe Yoo's punishment was insufficient given his transgressions, arguing he ought to be at least stripped of his license to practice law, if not prosecuted.

http://rawstory.com/2010/02/torture-...imeline-obama/

[DarrinS]

Light is to roach as OP is to boutons.

[DarrinS]

"just saying things they believed to be true"

They were lying. dubya and his entire administration took office with the overwhelming (but hidden) priority to invade Iraq for oil.

Psst. Where's all that oil?


It's strange to me that more people don't know we get the vast majority of our oil from Canada and Mexico.