Obama Is Keeping Bush's Worst "War on Terror" Policies Firmly In Place

[Karmadillo]

http://www.alternet.org/rights/143400/obama_is_keeping_bush%27s_worst_%22war_on_terror%22_policies_firmly_in_place

By Julian Sanchez, The Nation. Posted October 24, 2009

Thanks to behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the Obama administration, a bipartisan majority has approved legislation that seems to abandon hope of reining in the Patriot Act.

We know the rules by now, the strange conventions and stilted Kabuki scripts that govern our cartoon facsimile of a national security debate. The Obama administration makes vague, reassuring noises about constraining executive power and protecting civil liberties, but then merrily adopts whatever appalling policy George W. Bush put in place. Conservatives hit the panic button on the right-wing noise machine anyway, keeping the delicate ecosystem in balance by creating the false impression that something has changed. We've watched the formula play out with Guantánamo Bay, torture prosecutions and the invocation of "state secrets." We appear to be on the verge of doing the same with national security surveillance.

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee seemed to abandon hope of bringing any real change to the Patriot Act. A lopsided and depressingly bipartisan majority approved legislation that would reauthorize a series of expanded surveillance powers set to expire at the end of the year. Several senators had proposed that reauthorization be wedded to safeguards designed to protect the privacy of innocent Americans from indiscriminate data dragnets -- but behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the Obama administration ensured that even the most modest of these were stripped from the final bill now being sent to the full Senate.

In September the Senate got off to a promising start. Only three provisions are actually slated for "sunset" this year: "lone wolf" authority to wiretap terror suspects unconnected with any foreign terror group; "roving" wiretaps that can follow a suspect across an indefinite number of phone lines and Internet accounts; and "Section 215" orders that can be used to compel third parties to turn over any "tangible thing" investigators believe may be relevant to a terrorism investigation. Yet several Democrats had signaled a desire to use the renewal process to undertake a much broader review of the post-9/11 surveillance architecture, including National Security Letters (NSLs) -- a controversial tool that permits the mass acquisition of financial and telecommunications records without court order -- and last year's sweeping amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which permit the executive branch to authorize broad interception of Americans' international communications with minimal court oversight. Democratic Senator Russ Feingold proposed an ambitious and comprehensive reform bill called the JUSTICE Act -- which still would have reauthorized roving wiretaps and 215 orders -- while Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy offered a more modest bill that nevertheless sought to narrow the nearly unlimited scope of NSLs and Section 215.

The renewal of the expiring provisions was always a fait accompli, though Fox News and some conservative columnists falsely claimed that Democrats were scheming to eliminate them entirely. Feingold had recommended permitting the as-yet-unused "lone wolf" provision to lapse, but at hearings on renewal last month Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse didn't believe there was "any doubt" about the reapproval of all three. Rather, Whitehouse explained, the question was whether any "further refinements" might be needed to check potential abuses.

In public, the administration declared its openness to such "modifications." As well one might expect, considering that President Obama himself had co- sponsored legislation in 2005 containing many of the very same safeguards now in Feingold's bill. Even when, during the campaign, Obama had disappointed many of his supporters by voting for the very FISA Amendments Act he pledged to filibuster, he reassured them that as president he would revisit that "imperfect" bill. Civil libertarians understood that the more limited Leahy bill would provide the template for reform but had reason to hope some of the key provisions of Feingold's JUSTICE Act might be incorporated during markup.

more...

[rubberducky]

1. I think the "war machine" is bigger than Obama ever dreamed it was.

[endless october]

2. i'm willing to give him time....

but his continuation of Bush policies has been a big disappointment.

please get rid of the fucking patriot act.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

4. How much time?

Obama voted to re-authorize the PATRIOT ACT while in Congress.

I'm not sure what you are pinning your hopes upon.

[endless october]

5. if i had to bet, i would bet he leaves it in place.

but i do hope that i'm wrong in this case.

[SammyWinstonJack]

3. K&R

[kenny blankenship]

6. The neverending War Of Terror is a side effect of Empire

As the periphery of the empire pushes out into new lands to subdue new peoples, the rulers of empire become paradoxically less and less sure of their safety at home. More and more nations are "inside" our pens as the number of our foreign bases increases in more and more countries. The number and kind of people who could strike from the "inside" rises with the march of empire. No one can be trusted as the sleep and the digestion of the imperial rulers declines. The goal has become to intimidate everyone--every subject of the empire--regardless of their prior citizenship status. Only those directly engaged in and profiting from the imperial project will be above suspicion. Everyone else will be treated as an enemy agent against whom sufficient evidence is being collected.

Obama will not stop the War Of Terror abuses for the simple reason that he is fully committed to the success of the Empire which spawned them.

[cliffordu]

8. Well....You have to have oil for your CAR, now don't ya???

Cheap ipods and shit.

[kenny blankenship]

9. That's the spirit!

My Constitutional rights for an SUV!

Let's trade the Bill of Rights for a tank of gas. Actually, our tanks will need the gas more eventually, so we the people will likely get neither our rights returned nor cheap gasoline.

[Karmadillo]

10. If that's the case, where does that leave those opposed to Empire? The Democratic Wing of the

Democratic Party seems less than influential these days.

[geek tragedy]

14. The primary was in 2008.

Get over it already.

[MadHound]

7. What, you expect the government to give up this sort of power peacefully and quietly

This is not going to happen, why the hell do you think that the Democrats kept voting for the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II. They knew that some day they would get back in power and they wanted a bunch of new toys to play with.

Again, that dime's worth of difference is becoming more and more like a nickel with every passing day.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. The Democratic version of "Smoke 'em out!" and "Bring it on!".

[Solly Mack]

12. It's not called the 'war on terror' anymore...it's the 'Overseas Contingency Operation'

snicker

k/r, btw

[Orwellian_Ghost]

13. It seems

change means re-branding and not much else.

[blues90]

15. it is just re-branding , just like this crap of a healthcare bill

All of it looks like a feather in a political hat and nothing more than that.

Politicians from both sides can and do take a simple idea and twist into complete trash that it make sense to only them yet nothing changes for the better it just continues to get worse and the people sit back and let it happen mainly because it is so twisted out of shape by design .

Patriot act , all it is is the giving up of rights and no one read the damn thing yet voted it in and we elect these freaks over and over again.

Put a 6 month expiration date of these bills so when they begin to stink they sink instead of going along with this sort of insanity . Give all the politiicans a 90 day probation period like all workers get , screw up or lie and get the hell out.

[roamer65]

16. One thing is common among our crappy political parties.

"Never waste a good crisis."