Obama's Habeas Corpus Arch-Hypocrisy from Paul Street on Greenwald article

Obama's Habeas Corpus Arch-Hypocrisy
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/radio/2009/02/24/aclu/.

I had to read this twice just to take it in. The first time I went through it I had to stop to take a deep breath and a short walk around the block, repeating to myself the words, "holy freaking shit."

This is as bad as anything I've ever read about Obama.

Obama has actually turned out worse than I thought. He has out-done even my highly critical take on him from the left. His administration is completely nauseating. (I will explain some of this conclusion in the May issue of Z Magazine [ print - remember that?], in an article that went to press before I learned about the issue Greenwald discusses).

A brief summary of Greenwald's essay... Last February, the Obama administration filed a telling brief in federal court. In two sentences, this brief declared that the Obama Department of Justice essentially embraced the Bush administration's totalitarian position on (against) habeas corpus.

After the Supreme Court ruled last June that Guantanamo detainees possess the right to a hearing to contest the charges against them, the Bush administration simply started sending so-called enemy combatants from around the world to the American prison camp in Bagram Air Force base in occupied Afghanistan. Since Afghanistan is a "war zone," the Bush White House argued, prisoners there have no constitutional rights. Never mind that these were not prisoners captured on a battlefield in Afghanistan but were people abducted from their homes and workplaces in other countries and flown in secret U.S. jets to Bagram.

In its February '09 brief, the Obama justice department defended this Orwellian policy, arguing that such prisoners can be locked up without any constitutional rights for an indefinite period of time just as long as they are incarcerated in Bagram instead of Guantanamo!

If anyone cares at this point, Obama the U.S. senator and presidential candidate and former law professor spoke eloquently against Guantanamo and on behalf of "rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus."

As Greenwald puts it, "Barack Obama - the one trying to convince Democrats to make him their nominee and then their President - said that abducting people and imprisoning them without charge was (a) un-American; (b) tyrannical; (c) unnecessary to fight Terrorism; (d) a potent means for stoking anti-Americanism and fueling Terrorism; (e) a means of endangering captured American troops, Americans traveling abroad and Americans generally; and (f) a violent beyrayal of core, centuries-old Western principles of justice. But today's Barack Obama, safely ensconced in the White House, fights tooth and tail to preserve his power to do exactly that."

How incredibly grotesque. Such hypocrisy, I must say, truly stinks to high heaven.

Now, take a deep breath and walk out your front doo. Go around your block once, repeating after me, "holy shit, holy shit, holy shit..."