By Olivier Knox-White House Correspondent
President Barack Obama came to office vowing a clean break from George W. Bush's national security policies: He would end the war in Iraq, order a halt to harsh interrogation practices that met international definitions of torture and close Guantanamo Bay.
Three and a half years later, how's he doing? The independent investigative journalistic outfit Pro Publica has a handy interactive chart to let you know. "Interact with the whole thing," as no one says.
Now running for reelection, Obama has been highlighting the troop withdrawal from Iraq and the planned draw-down from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 (though he and Afghan President Hamid Karzai just signed an agreement that could have American soldiers stay in that war-torn country until 2024).
"For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq," Obama told cheering supporters in Richmond, Virginia, on May 5. "Osama bin Laden is no longer a threat to this country. Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat. And by 2014, the war in Afghanistan will be over."
But Guantanamo Bay is still open. And after insisting that America's civilian courts could handle trials of major accused terrorists, the administration has put alleged 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial — before a military commission at Gitmo.
The timeline format is necessarily a bit spare. On Guantanamo Bay, for example, it notes Obama's January 21, 2009 order to close the facility, followed by his March 7, 2011 order giving the green-light to holding prisoners there indefinitely. In between, however, were years of bitter political fights with Republicans fiercely opposed to shutting Guantanamo Bay. And it was a Democrat, House Appropriations Chairman Dave Obey, who in May 2009 stripped out the money Obama requested to close the prison from an appropriations bill — the first and perhaps most crippling blow to the president's stated goal because it came from an ally.
MTW- It is all Bush’s fault that he (Obama) is doing the same things. But, he is doing them secretly, and telling lie after lie (sounds like the Judas Priest album “Sin After Sin”) to the Americans who still watch his speeches. (I have to, if I want to write about it-but it sucks) They all sound like the same recycled speech I heard last year and the one before. We will be in Afghanistan for a long time, so get used to us; and they still have their water boarding at Gitmo. I am shocked, but somehow not appalled. Nobama-Nobiden in 2012! Bush was still better. The "War on Terror" was simply a terrible idea, but America wanted blood. What are you going to do? Attack us, and we shall always retaliate, no matter who is President.
GOD BLESS YOU ALL.
Posted by Michael T. Wayne- A Little Crazy
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