February 20th, 2009 at 10:58PM

Filed in International by on February 20, 2009

That is the moment that Barack Obama disappointed me for the first time.

“They’ve now embraced the Bush policy that you can create prisons outside the law,” said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has represented several detainees.

Donviti is coming on with “Obama is a politician” in 3…2…1…

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  1. donviti says:

    sigh

  2. Unstable Isotope says:

    Hey, it will make the decision easy about the people we tortured at Gitmo. We’ll just send them to Bagram so we’ll never know what was done to them in our name.

  3. Truth Teller says:

    Same oh Same Oh

  4. John Tobin says:

    This sounds troubling. It’s early in the administration. Hopefully, Obama will review his human rights stance and make adjustments. If not, internationally the U.S. can not regain the stature he hoped it would , people needlessly suffer and what appears to be good domestic policy gets overshadowed by bad foreign policy (which is part of what happened to LBJ in the 1960s).
    Another troubling article in the same Huffington Post:
    Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal turned $90 million in stimulus money that would have extended unemployment compensation for 25,000 La. Residents and would have funded the state’s unemployment compensation expansion for three years.
    I guess adhering to some political philosophy is more important to him than whether his constituents can feed themselves.

    http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/20/jindal-unemployed/

  5. karmicjay says:

    I am disappointed with his stance here too.

  6. jason330 says:

    Look. We need somewhere to put all the Credit Default Swap Traders and Fox News Analysts.

  7. edisonkitty says:

    I find this troubling, as well. I can understand a difference between detention in an active war zone for those captured in battle from a Guantanamo, where prisoners are transported to another country to be held illegally, solely to avoid acting within the law. However, I think then, that the Bagram petitioners should be defined as, and treated as, prisoners of war. We have adequate means to deal with POWs legally, and world-accepted treatment such as the Geneva Conventions are clearly in effect. I think a ruling like this would have been far more in keeping with Obama’s stated policy goals.

    Also troubling for me is that Fox and the rest of the trad med will beat this drum interminably. Big sigh.

  8. Dippy says:

    Why? Why has he embraced this policy? Maybe that’s what we need to find out. Maybe there’s a damn good reason. Something to think about . . .

  9. Stay tuned, most of Obama’s foreign policy actions will closely resemble a former President named Bush.