CIA lawyer says Obama administration backed and continued virtually all Bush-era programs

(I fervently disagree with the end summation of this article.--jef)

J. D. Heyes
Natural News
Wednesday, September 7, 2011


As he campaigned for the presidency in 2007 and 2008, then Sen. Barack Obama made clear there would be no torturing of terrorism suspects on his watch, as had been done by the agency with White House and Justice Department approval during the Bush administration in the years following the 9/11 attacks.

And as it turned out, one of the first things Obama did after becoming president was sign an executive order that included a ban on the tortureof terror suspects.

That was in 2009, shortly after becoming president. But with the campaign over, now came the bitter reality of actually having togovern. As president, one of the things Obama, the new commander-in-chief, was expected to do was to continue successful prosecution of the so-called Global War On Terror begun Sept. 12, 2001. To do that would require action, not campaign promises. And action meant sticking with what worked.

That’s why, despite public protestations and campaign-like slogans of “change,” Obama used a presidential sleight of hand to disapprove torturingon U.S. soilwhile granting the CIA authority to continue the practice in countries whose record on human rights abuses was already well-known.

This is why the president, bowing the realities of office rather than the seductive sound bites of a campaign, agreed to allow the continuance of most other Bush-era anti-terrorism CIA tactics that may be distasteful to the well-heeled elite but that are vital to protect the integrity and national security of the world’s most powerful democracy.

In a soon-to-be released PBSFrontlinedocumentary John Rizzo, a top CIA lawyer, says the incoming Obama administration may have tut-tutted the agency’s anti-terrorism tactics on the campaign trail but went on to “endorse” nearly all of them when the time came to take over the reins of power.

“I was part of the transition briefings of the incoming Obama team, and they signaled fairly early on that the incoming president believed in a vigorous, aggressive, continuing counterterrorism effort,” Rizzo says in the documentary.

“Although they never said it exactly, it was clear that the interrogation program was going away. We all knew that,” he continued. “But his people were signaling to us, I think partly to try to assure us that they weren’t going to come in and dismantle the place, that they were going to be just as tough, if not tougher, than the Bush people.

“With a notable exception of the enhanced interrogation program, the incoming Obama administration changed virtually nothing with respect to existing CIA programs and operations,” he said. “Things continued. Authorities were continued that were originally granted by President Bush beginning shortly after 9/11. Those were all picked up, reviewed and endorsed by the Obama administration.”


In truth, the covert warfare programs under the Obama administration have actually expanded since the Bush team left office. While Obama may not be casting as wide a net for terror suspects around the world, that has given way to more deadlier operations, as in, an increased use of CIA-owned drones to strike terror suspects in places like Pakistan. Consider it the modern-day equivalent of President Richard Nixon’s ordering of secret bombing campaigns in Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

The Obama administration should be commended for its efforts to protect the nation from the growing global terrorist threat. Having said that, it would be a refreshing change of pace for the current White House to not just admit the preceding administration’s hard-core strategy of doing what it took to prevent future 9/11′s was effective, but also worthy of repetition.

 resources:
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009/01/obama_orders_gu.html

http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/cia-lawyer-obama-endorsed-nearly-all-bush-era-programs/

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/10/world/la-fg-cia-interrogation-20110411

The ACLU on Obama and Core Liberties

Wednesday, September 7, 2011 by Salon

by Glenn Greenwald

The ACLU decided to use the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack to comprehensively survey the severe erosion of civil liberties justified in the name of that event, an erosion that -- as it documents -- continues unabated, indeed often in accelerated form, under the Obama administration.  The group today is issuing a report entitled A Call to Courage: Reclaiming Our Liberties Ten Years After 9/11; that title is intended to underscore the irony that political leaders who prance around as courageous warriors against Terrorism in fact rely on one primary weapon -- fear-mongering: the absence of courage -- to vest the government with ever-more power and the citizenry with ever-fewer rights.  Domestically, the "War on Terror" has been, and continues to be, a war on basic political liberties more than it is anything else.  The particulars identified in this new ACLU report will not be even remotely new to any readers here, but given the organization's status among progressives as the preeminent rights-defending group in the country, and given the bird's-eye-view the report takes of these issues, it is well worth highlighting some of its key findings.

Let's begin with the ACLU's summary assessment of what President Obama has done with regard to these matters:

Last week, the top lawyer and 34-year-veteran of the CIA, John Rizzo, explained to PBS' Frontline that Obama has "changed virtually nothing" from Bush policies in these areas, and this week, the ACLU explains that "most [Bush] policies remain core elements of our national security strategy today."  At some point very soon, this basic truth will be impossible to deny with a straight face even for the most hardened loyalists of both parties, each of whom have been eager, for their own reasons, to deny it (and even the two differences cited there, though positive, are wildly exaggerated by Obama defenders: the torture techniques authorized by Bush were no longer in use and the CIA black sites were empty by the time Obama was inaugurated; by contrast, there is ample evidence that the Obama administration continues to use torture by proxy and rendition/CIA-black-sites by proxy as well).

The ACLU then highlights one of the most perverse though revealing ironies of Democratic Party opinion on civil liberties in the Obama age: the way in which Bush's attempt merely to imprison a U.S. citizen without due process (or merely to eavesdrop on citizens) prompted such outrage, while Obama's claimed right to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process provokes virtually no protest:

Critically, the ACLU emphasizes that this Obama fixation -- wildly expanded programs of targeted killings even of U.S. citizens far from any battlefield -- is as threatening to the rule of law, and at least as dangerous, as any policy implemented by Bush/Cheney:

For all the talk about how Bush and Cheney turned the U.S. into a rogue state, here is the escalating result of this Obama policy:

The ACLU then devotes an entire chapter to the way in which immunity for America's torturers -- bestowed jointly by President Obama and a judicial branch meekly deferential to his and Bush's claims of state secrecy -- has contaminated and degraded the entire justice system and made the future reintroduction of torture a virtual inevitability:

Then there's the ongoing targeting of American Muslims for some of the most invasive and unconstitutional rights-abridging actions in decades.  Explains the ACLU: "No area of American Muslim civil society was left untouched by discriminatory and illegitimate government action during the Bush years . . . In short, the Bush administration used religious, racial, and national-origin profiling as one of this nation’s primary domestic counter-terrorism tools."  And now?

A separate chapter is devoted to what the ACLU calls "A Massive and Unchecked Surveillance Society."  It explains: "Using Patriot Act  authority, the Bush Administration started -- and the Obama Administration has continued -- to conduct wholesale 'preventive' surveillance of innocent Americans without judicial review."  And "the result is a national surveillance society in which Americans’ right to privacy is under unprecedented siege."  But little is known about exactly what is being done by this purely unaccountable hidden government -- what The Washington Post calls "Top Secret America" -- because of this:

This Surveillance State, like most other Bush/Obama Terrorism policies, is justified by a never-ending orgy of fear-mongering.  But other than the enrichment of the private Security State industry (see here and here), its real purpose -- as I documented last week -- is this:

But the primary cause of this Bush-Obama continuity is the vigorous embrace by both Presidents of the same theory of war and Terrorism -- the unlimited global battlefield and the President's resulting unconstrained power to act anywhere in the world without limits -- which was once so controversial during the Bush presidency but has now become mainstream, bipartisan consensus:

Pointing to that core theory of both presidencies, the ACLU dispatches one of the most misleading claims of Obama defenders: that the President's failure to close Guantanamo is due exclusively to Congressional obstructionism; in fact, long before Congress acted at all with regard to that camp, the President announced his intention to continue its core injustice -- indefinite detention -- albeit in a different locale:

During the Bush era, the actions and condemnations of the ACLU received ample positive attention from progressives. That, of course, is no longer true, and this damning report will likely be ignored in most of those circles, just as this truly remarkable comment from the ACLU's Executive Director has been.  And, as usual, anyone urging that attention be paid to these facts will be met with demands that eyes be diverted instead to how scary Sarah Palin Christine O'Donnell Michele Bachmann Rick Perry is, and then this will all blissfully fade away in a cloud of partisan electioneering even with the election more than a year away.

Either way, this creeping unchecked authoritarianism marches forward unabated, and is now -- rather than the province of the right-wing GOP -- fully bipartisan consensus.  I really don't understand how progressives think they'll be taken seriously the next time there is a GOP President and they try to resurrect their feigned concern for these matters; they'll be every bit as credible as conservatives who pretend to be deficit-warriors and defenders of restrained government only when the other party is in power.

But even that ultimately matters little: so entrenched is this institutional militarism, secrecy, surveillance and authoritarianism that even if there were greater public debate over it like there was during the Bush presidency, this system would hardly be affected, let alone threatened.  Governments and other power factions -- especially ones threatened by the prospect of social unrest and upheaval -- do not relinquish this sort of authority unless compelled to do so.

UPDATE:  Tomorrow morning beginning at roughly 11:20 am EST, I'll be on NPR's On Point, discussing 9/11 and civil liberties, along with The Washington Post's Dana Priest, who will be on from the start of the show at 11:00 am discussing Top Secret America.

UPDATE II: Donald Rumsfeld becomes the latest right-wing figure -- of many -- to heap praise on President Obama's Terrorism and civil liberties policies (h/t flellis):

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says President Barack Obama has come to accept much of the Bush Doctrine out of necessity, despite what he campaigned on in 2008. . . .

“They ended up keeping Guantanamo open not because they like it — we didn’t like it either — but they couldn't think of a better solution,” Rumsfeld told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren on Tuesday. . . .

"The same is true with the Patriot Act, and military commissions, and indefinite detention. All of those things were criticized but today are still in place two-and-a-half years later because they are the best alternative to the other choices -- and they are in fact successful in keeping America safer," he says.

Just as nobody could have strengthened the Bush/Cheney Terrorism template the way Obama has, so, too could nobody have provided vindication for those policies the way he has.

Obama, Still Better Than Bush?

(I almost wrote this very article. One reason he is worse is because we knew what Bush would bring to the table. He didn't surprise many, did he?  But Obama came in doing the exact opposite of what he campaigned for/on. His broken promises read like epic failure.--jef)

+++++++++++++++++

It's Really Hard to Tell
By ANDREW LEVINE

A gullible portion of the electorate here in the Homeland  and a gullible slice of the entire world expected a great deal from Barack Obama.  But anyone who paid close attention to his run for the White House, and who managed not to succumb to the promise of hope that radiated out from the Rorschach figure Obama then was, expected nothing more than a Clintonite Restoration with cosmetic changes.  

Still, even those of us with expectations as low as that thought it obvious that an Obama administration would be a vast improvement over what we had endured for the preceding eight years.  And, once the Democratic field narrowed to a choice between Obama and Hillary Clinton, there was ample reason to prefer that the nomination go to him.  He seemed less inclined to make fast and loose with soldiers and bombs, and less unfriendly than she would be towards what remains of the affirmative state generations of Democrats helped fashion and that her husband did so much to undo.       

Still, no matter how low the expectations, it did not take long for disappointment to set in.  For me, it began the day Obama made Joe Biden his running mate.  It’s not that Biden’s politics is worse than other Democrats’; it’s that this purported foreign policy wise man has no idea how clueless he is about the world or how off his enthusiasms and animosities are.  Even after the election, I, along with other Obama skeptics, would still, in moments of weakness, let myself think that great things might happen yet; that Obama was only being god-fatherly with his appointments, keeping his friends close and his enemies closer.  That was, after all, the conventional wisdom among liberal pundits, and the will to believe is strong. 

But the illusion became harder to maintain as Inauguration Day approached – with Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers and other Wall Street toadies slated to manage economic policy, Hillary Clinton chosen to be Secretary of State, and George Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, kept on to run Bush’s wars.  It was in that period too that it became clear that, under Obama, there would be no settling of accounts with the historical crimes of the Bush era.   As if that wasn’t enough to cause despair, Obama’s silence on Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli assault on Gaza, was deafening.  

Then, for a while, it looked like the situation Bush and Cheney handed over to the fledgling President was so desperate that common sense would prevail, forcing him to act in the ways his supporters expected he would.  He resisted the pressure.  By the time Rahm Emanuel made it clear that the administration would scuttle the “public option” to get its milquetoast health care (actually, insurance reform) bill passed, all one could say in Obama’s behalf is that, no matter how disappointing he might be, at least he was better than Bush.

How could that not be right? Anybody would be better than Bush!  It is therefore telling that one rarely hears that faint praise these days – and not just because memories of Bush’s awfulness have faded.  It isn’t said much anymore because it has come to seem less obviously true.  Nowadays, what one hears instead is just that Obama is better than the loonies running for the Republican nomination. 

That claim is unassailable.  But it doesn’t speak to the question at hand: whether Obama is still better than Bush.   On election day 2012, it may become relevant – especially to voters living in states whose electoral votes are up for grabs -- that the Republican candidate is worse, probably much worse, than Obama could ever be.  But that has nothing to do with what is an urgent task now: coming to a clear understanding of what the Obama presidency has been about, and what its trajectory is likely to be.  

Because circumstances change and because each president is awful in his own way, comparing presidents is, as a rule, a fatuous exercise, fit only for TV pundits and pop historians.  But, in this case, the time frame is narrow enough and the circumstances similar enough that a comparison can be instructive.  In that spirit, I would venture that George W. Bush’s first administration, from the weeks following 9/11 until the 2004 presidential campaign got underway, was exceptionally awful in every respect.  If that is the point of reference, it would be hard for Obama, or anyone else, not to be better than Bush.  

But if we focus instead on Bush’s second term, and especially on the years after the 2006 election, it’s not at all clear that Obama has been a better president.  Indeed, one could make a case that, style apart, the Obama administration has continued along the lines its predecessor established.  To the extent this is so, it would follow that his administration has not improved upon what came before it except, at most, in superficial ways.  Lately, some erstwhile Obama supporters have even suggested that, in key respects, the Obama administration has been worse than Bush’s – especially on environmental matters and on a host of issues pertaining to the rule of law.

For some diehard Obamaphiles, Libya was the last straw.  This latest war of choice, in no way attributable to Bush, is a blatant imperialist venture, undertaken on a disingenuous pretext that fell apart almost from Day One.  Intended, supposedly, to save civilian lives, the US/NATO bombing has unleashed a civil war.  Libya also exposes what Obama’s vaunted “multilateralism” amounts to: empowerment of right-wing politicians from the “old” Europe – miscreants like David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy -- keen on reviving the bad old days.  

But the main problem with this latest war is that the way Obama launched it is in plain violation not just of the War Powers Act but also of Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution; and that he did it that way not because Congress wouldn’t have gone along, but so that in the future he could claim that, as Commander-in-Chief, he has the right to launch drones and drop bombs more or less as he pleases; Congress be damned.  We now know that his top lawyers told him that this was illegal, as it plainly is.  He did it anyway, finding lower-level lawyers who told him what he wanted to hear.  

At least Bush and Cheney did not deliberately not ask Congress to authorize their wars.  If only for this reason, Obama, the peace candidate and Nobel laureate, is certainly no better than his predecessor on questions of executive power.  Arguably, he is worse.     

Because there is likely to be movement on this front in the near future, it is worth noting an area in which Obama’s defenders can fairly say that he is is indeed better than Bush, though only slightly. 

He is better on gay politics.  Until recently, one could not have said that.  For almost two years, Obama neglected gay issues as much as he did the concerns of the rest of his base.  But then, when he and his advisors thought it expedient to shore up liberal support, he finally “nudged” Congress to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.”  He also declared that his administration would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in the courts, though it will continue to enforce it.  These are small moves in the right direction; they advance equality.  But note, first, that Obama never leads, he only follows when it is plain that the public has his back; and note too that these issues are ones that “progressives” should feel ambivalent about supporting.   

It is fair to say that one reason why Obama threw this sop to his base is that the radicalism that once animated the struggle for gay liberation has gone missing.  Advancing equality is a good thing of course, but should progressives militate in favor of measures that aid military recruiting and retention?  And shouldn’t they be proposing civil unions, not marriage, for all?  

The issue is not or should not be about “marriage,” the word.  It is about how the institution the word designates is understood by proponents of gay marriage today.  Their understanding, like the understanding of their adversaries, offends the separation of church and state.  That principle was important at the time of the founding of the republic and it is important now as theocratic currents swell around us.  This is why progressives should fight to keep religion out of our political and civil affairs.  But by seeking to advance equality in the way proponents of gay marriage do, they implicitly legitimate its presence.    

Needless to say, if, for any reason, people want clerics involved in validating their relationships, that is their business and they should be free to do as they please.  But the state’s interest is limited to the civil aspects of marriage (or civil union).  It therefore has no business allowing clerics to confer the rights that marriage (or civil union) entails; the state alone should regulate the institution.  Unfortunately, this rather obvious and far from radical point has not registered much lately in the struggle for equality.  Proponents of gay marriage don’t want to change the institution; they only want same-sex couples brought into it.

The comforting conservatism of gay activists, along with the fact that gay issues don’t materially affect the interests of the corporations or wealthy individuals Obama courts, makes it possible for him to overcome the disabling (and largely unrequited) “bipartisanship” that usually governs his political maneuvering, especially when, as in this case, substantial majorities are on board.  And so Obama has and likely will again “give” something to this part of his base, to the great approbation of his otherwise taken for granted supporters.  Bush had to deal with a far more retrograde – and intolerant – base.  That, more than anything else, explains why, in this respect at least, Obama is better than Bush.

However, it seems that, in general, Bush at least believed in what he did; he didn’t know better.   It is hard to think the same of someone of Obama’s intelligence, education and experience of the world.  And although there was nothing in the record, beyond “paling around with terrorists,” that his enemies could use against him in 2008, there was enough to suggest to those who were determined to think well of him that Obama’s views, however compromised, were at least reasonable and humane.  Yet, on almost every front, he has taken up where Bush left off.   Bush was a simpleton – morally and intellectually.  Obama is a knave.  One needn’t be an old-fashioned moralist to think knavery worse.

*                           *

But that is a moral reproach, and the question posed at the outset is about politics, not ethics.  It does not call for passing judgment on the man so much as for reflecting on how much better or worse it is having Obama, rather than Bush, in office.  To address that question properly, we need to take into account not just the effects of the Obama presidency on the interests of his core constituencies, but also on their capacity to work for “change.”  From that vantage point, it doesn’t look good for Obama.

We have wars aplenty – in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Libya, and with varying degrees of openness and intensity in Yemen, Somalia  and Pakistan and who knows where else.  Yet we have no peace movement to speak of, not even to the extent we did in 2006.  Wall street continues to bring ruin to the bottom 98 per cent of the population, but there is no opposition strong enough to stop the predators in their tracks.  Our government has given the nuclear industry license to play Russian roulette with the future of the planet, and the opposition has largely acquiesced.  The administration’s other energy policies are outrageous too, and its heedlessness of urgent environmental concerns is staggering. Worst of all, organized labor is more on the ropes than ever, despite overwhelming popular support for unions and union rights.  In these and other ways, there is, as Brecht said of pre-War Germany, only injustice and no resistance.

It would be different if Bush were still in charge.  No matter how cowardly Democrats are and no matter how servile corporate media may be, there would be more resistance than there now is, just as there was before Obama became President.  Obama rode liberal discontent into the White House and then, deliberately or not, he put the fire out of liberal bellies.  That’s what disappointment and disillusion does when the potential opposition is riddled with people determined to keep on cutting the man endless slack. 

Part of the reason for their debilitating passivity is fear of the Tea Party/Republican alternative, a fear stoked relentlessly by Obama apologists and Democratic Party cheerleaders.  But fear-mongering is a two-edged sword.  At the same time that it encourages standing by the devil we know, it also makes plain how pitiful Obama’s opposition in the 2012 election will likely be.  That awareness can undo the caution that currently afflicts the political scene.  

Yes, the economy is in poor shape and Obama is widely (and correctly) thought to be partly to blame.  And, yes, for an incumbent, that should be a cause for concern.   But perhaps not so much when, as in Margaret Thatcher’s expression, there is no (remotely plausible) alternative.  This is why conditions are ripe for forcing change upon the powers that be.  But it isn’t happening with the intensity it should.  Indeed, the most fervent resistance these days is coming from the right, which opposes Obama for all the wrong reasons.  How pathetic is that!  And how urgent that it change!

Is Obama still better than Bush?  The bar is so low that the answer may still be Yes.  But it’s looking increasingly like maybe not.  And it is becoming plainer still that being better than Bush isn’t all that it was cracked up to be.

Tax-Deductible Invasions

How to Wage War and Balance the Budget at the Same Time
By WALTER BRASCH

Millions of Americans gave George W. Bush unquestioned support when he diverted personnel and resources from the war against al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden to invade Iraq.

Several million fewer opposed the invasion, stating that the primary mission was to destroy the enemy hiding in Afghanistan that destroyed a part of America and not to expand the war. At first, President Bush claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, capable of destroying Israel and, if placed aboard cargo vessels, could be launched at the east coast of the U.S. When that explanation fizzled, Bush said the invasion was to remove a dictator. Soon, “Regime Change” was the buzz phrase of the month.

Flash forward eight years. Different president. Different country. Same kind of dictatorship. This time, the conservatives have loudly cried that Barack Obama should not have launched missiles at Libya. And many liberals, while protesting expansion of war, were now facing other liberals who supported President Obama’s mini-war of helping oppressed people. The Iraq war has now cost American taxpayers more than $ 780 billion. The two-week (so far) war against Libya has now cost almost $750 million, most of it for Tomahawk missiles.

What’s a president to do? The president’s party spends millions of dollars on polls, none of which are reliable. The president is then forced to put his finger into the wind to see what the voters want—and then does what he wants to do anyway.

Whatever he does will be met by hostility on one side and near-blind support on the other. However, there is a solution. Tax checkoff.

No, that’s not like a distant cousin of the Russian short story writer. It’s a way for the President and the taxpayers to get the biggest bang for their buck.

Let’s say that a president decides he wants to invade some hostile foreign country—Canada, for example. Instead of going into the War Room with his military leadership and plotting how best to meet the strategic, tactical, and political goals of an invasion, he stops for two weeks.

During the first week, all Americans would be sent an email, asking them if they support the invasion of the country that sends Arctic Clippers to the U.S. during Spring. At the end of that week, voting stops. Now, let’s say that 40 percent of Americans think invading Canada is important and the prudent thing to do, but 43 percent oppose it. (The other 17 percent would still be trying to find out why their computers crashed.)

Normally, the president would say that most Americans don’t want to invade Canada and might listen to them. But, the 40 percent are vigorous in their beliefs. No problem.

On the next paycheck will be a question. “Do you support committing American troops to invade Canada, and stopping Arctic Clippers?” Those who answer “yes” will then be assessed a proportion for the costs of that invasion, putting their wallets and purses where their mouths are. If 60 million Americans want war, and the cost is a mere $300 million a week, then each supporter would have about $5 per week deducted from his or her paycheck. It’d hardly be noticeable. Of course, there might be a $5 surcharge for the cost of burying the dead, treating the wounded, and long-term physical and mental rehabilitation. But, hey, even at $10 a week, war is rather cheap. And, most important, all of it is tax-deductible.

Those who don’t support the war wouldn’t have the money deducted. They could decide to support another war later, or pay a “fair share” for more vigorous environmental regulation and enforcement, or even a few dollars a month to allow members of Congress to have junkets. Whatever is raised for junkets would be the total pool available, and would have to be split equally among the 535 members and several thousand critical staffers who, we all know, are the ones who do the work anyhow.

The Tax Checkoff System has one final advantage. With Americans deciding what to support and committing their personal fortunes or anemic savings accounts to the cause, we could wipe out the national debt and war at the same time.

'Obama Doctrine': Kill, Don't Detain

(The Nobel Peace Prize must be worth close to nothing these days...--jef)

***

George Bush left a big problem in the shape of Guantánamo. The solution? Don't capture bad guys, assassinate by drone
by Asim Qureshi

In 2001, Charles Krauthammer first coined the phrase "Bush Doctrine", which would later become associated most significantly with the legal anomaly known as pre-emptive strike. Understanding the doctrine with hindsight could lead to a further understanding of the legacy that the former administration left - the choice to place concerns of national security over even the most entrenched norms of due process and the rule of law. It is, indeed, this doctrine that united people across the world in their condemnation of Guantánamo Bay.

The ambitious desire to close Guantánamo hailed the coming of a new era, a feeling implicitly recognised by the Nobel peace prize that President Obama received. Unfortunately, what we witnessed was a false dawn. The lawyers for the Guantánamo detainees with whom I am in touch in the US speak of their dismay as they prepare for Obama to do the one thing they never expected - to send the detainees back to the military commissions - a decision that will lose Obama all support he once had within the human rights community.

Worse still, a completely new trend has emerged that, in many ways, is more dangerous than the trends under Bush. Extrajudicial killings and targeted assassinations will soon become the main point of contention that Obama's administration will need to justify. Although Bush was known for his support for such policies, the extensive use of drones under Obama have taken the death count well beyond anything that has been seen before.

Harold Koh, the legal adviser to the US state department, explained the justifications behind unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) when addressing the American Society of International Law's annual meeting on 25 March 2010:

"[I]t is the considered view of this administration ... that targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war ... As recent events have shown, al-Qaida has not abandoned its intent to attack the United States, and indeed continues to attack us. Thus, in this ongoing armed conflict, the United States has the authority under international law, and the responsibility to its citizens, to use force, including lethal force, to defend itself, including by targeting persons such as high-level al Qaeda leaders who are planning attacks ... [T]his administration has carefully reviewed the rules governing targeting operations to ensure that these operations are conducted consistently with law of war principles ... "[S]ome have argued that the use of lethal force against specific individuals fails to provide adequate process and thus constitutes unlawful extrajudicial killing. But a state that is engaged in armed conflict or in legitimate self-defense is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force. Our procedures and practices for identifying lawful targets are extremely robust, and advanced technologies have helped to make our targeting even more precise. In my experience, the principles of distinction and proportionality that the United States applies are not just recited at meeting. They are implemented rigorously throughout the planning and execution of lethal operations to ensure that such operations are conducted in accordance with all applicable law."

The legal justifications put forward by Koh are reminiscent of the arguments that were used by John Yoo and others in their bid to lend legitimacy to unlawful practices such as rendition, arbitrary detention and torture. The main cause for concern from Koh's statements is the implication that protective jurisdiction to which the US feels it is entitled in order to carry out operations anywhere in the world still continues under Obama. The laws of war do not allow for the targeting of individuals outside of the conflict zone, and yet we now find that extrajudicial killings are taking place in countries as far apart as Yemen, the Horn of Africa and Pakistan. From a legal and moral perspective, the rationale provided by the State Department is bankrupt and only reinforces the stereotype that the US has very little concern for its own principles.

Despite the legalities of what is being conducted, the actuality of extrajudicial killings, especially through UAVs is frightening. The recent revelations by WikiLeaks on the killing of civilians by US Apache helicopters in Iraq has strongly highlighted the opportunities for misuse surrounding targeting from the air. In the Iraq case, there were soldiers who were supposed to be using the equipment to identify so-called combatants, and yet they still managed to catastrophically target the wrong people. This situation is made even worse in the case of UAVs, where the operators are far removed from the reality of the conflict and rely on digital images to see what is taking place on the ground.

Conservative estimates from thinktanks such as the New American Foundation claim that civilian causalities from drone attacks are around one in three, although this figure is disputed by the Pakistani authorities. According to Pakistani official statistics, every month an average of 58 civilians were killed during 2009. Of the 44 Predator drone attacks that year, only five targets were correctly identified; the result was over 700 civilian casualties.

Regardless of the figures used, the case that extrajudicial killings are justified is extremely weak, and the number of civilian casualties is far too high to justify their continued use.

A further twist to the Obama Doctrine is the breaking of a taboo that the Bush administration balked at - the concept of treating US citizens outside of the US constitutional process. During the Bush era, the treatment of detainees such as John Walker Lindh, Yasser Hamdi and Jose Padilla showed reluctance by officials to treat their own nationals in the way it had all those of other nationalities (by, for instance, sending them to Guantánamo Bay and other secret prisons). The policy of discrimination reserved for US citizens showed that there was a line the US was not willing to cross.

At least, today, we can strike discrimination off the list of grievances against the current president. The National Security Council of the US has now given specific permission to the CIA to target certain US citizens as part of counter-terrorism operations. Specifically, Anwar al-Awlaki has been singled out for such treatment, as it has been claimed that he was directly involved in the planning of the Major Hasan Nidal killings and the Christmas Day bomber attacks. Indeed, it is claims such as this that bring the entire concept of targeted assassinations into question. The US would like us to believe that we should simply trust that they have the relevant evidence and information to justify such a killing, without bringing the individual to account before a court.

The assumption that trust should be extended to a government that has involved itself in innumerable unlawful and unconscionable practices since the start of the war on terror is too much to ask. Whatever goodwill the US government had after 9/11 was destroyed by the way in which it prosecuted its wars. Further, the hope that came with the election of Barack Obama has faded as his policies have indicated nothing more than a reconfiguration of the basic tenet of the Bush Doctrine - that the US's national security interests supersede any consideration of due process or the rule of law. The only difference - witness the rising civilian body count from drone attacks - being that Obama's doctrine is even more deadly.