US President Obama made a lot of promises during his 2008 campaign about the 'War on Terror' and how the United States would interrogate and detain those they viewed as enemies, if he were to win power.
Obama, obviously, has won just about all the power he needs to dismantle the NeoCons' 'War On Terror', and he appears to be getting straight down to some of the hardest work he will have to do in eventually removing the 'War On Terror' money siphon out of American taxapayers' pockets :
Barack Obama embarked on the wholesale deconstruction of George Bush's war on terror, shutting down the CIA's secret prison network, banning torture and rendition, and calling for a new set of rules for detainees. The repudiation of Bush's thinking on national security yesterday also saw the appointment of a high-powered envoy to the Middle East.When Obama demands Israel open Gaza's borders for the kind of free market trade that American allies are supposed to be embrace and encourage, then it will be clearer just what sort of Change he has planned to bring to a close the endless bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians.Obama's decision to permanently shut down the CIA's clandestine interrogation centres went far beyond the widely anticipated move to wind down the Guantánamo Bay detention centre within a year.
He cast his scrapping of the legal apparatus set up by Bush as a way for America to reclaim the moral high ground in the fight against al-Qaida.
"We are not, as I said during the inauguration, going to continue with the false choice between our safety and our ideals," Obama said at the signing ceremony. "We intend to win this fight. We are going to win it on our own terms."
In a sign of the sweeping rejection of the legal standards set by Bush, officials briefing reporters at the White House yesterday said the new administration would not be guided by any of the opinions on torture and detainees issued by the justice department after 11 September 2001.
Instead, Obama, in three executive orders, renewed the US commitment to the Geneva convention on the treatment of detainees. All detainees will be registered by the International Committee for the Red Cross, in another departure of past practice under the Bush administration.
A group of 16 retired admirals and generals, in a meeting organised by Human Rights First, said the move would restore America's moral authority in the world, and strengthen its national security. "President Obama has rejected the false choice between national security and our ideals," they said.Another order directs the CIA to follow the US army field manual on interrogations, which bars such techniques as waterboarding.
Obama appears to be seeking a new direction of not allowing the US to be totally subservient to Israel in the Middle East. It has been announced that :
...his administration would put resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the top of his agenda, "actively and aggressively" seeking a comprehensive peace deal. As a sign of that intent, he confirmed that former senator George Mitchell, a veteran US mediator, would be his Middle East envoy.
Obama, who had been criticised for his silence during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, set out a new position that, while still leaning towards Israel, was more even-handed than that under Bush. He called for Hamas to stop firing rockets at Israel, but also said that Israel must "complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza".
Israel is, apparently, quite worried about the apointment of George Mitchell as Middle East envoy. Mitchell is credited as helping to end the war between the British government and the IRA, and believes "there is no such thing as a conflict that can’t be ended. Conflicts are created and conducted by human beings. They can be ended by human beings."
In Israel, Mitchell is seen as too even-handed, and will not tolerate Israeli or Palestinian officials who only wish to the continue the fighting, and bombings, and infanticide.
There's a lot of very powerful, and still very rich, people on the Middle East Crisis War Cash Express, and they don't want to get off. More than $100 billion American dollars has flowed into the 'Middle East Crisis' since George W. Bush took office in 2000. Most of the money has gone to, and through, Israel, but billions have also gone to Fatah. The weapons sales alone that are only excusable by the never-ending "Crisis in the Middle East" has been good for the global war industry. The 'War On Terorr' and the 'Middle East Crisis' have been banner years for arms and weapons sales. And they won't take talk of it all coming to a very fast end under Obama as a sign of brighter futures for themselves.
You will know that George Mitchell and Obama are really taking apart the 'War on Terror' and ending the manufactured 'Middle East Crisis' when stories linking Mitchell to decades old porn-and-hookers fables start bombarding the tabloids. If the profiteers of the 'Middle East Crisis' are really upset, Mitchell's message about how he is changing the Middle East paradigm will be swamped with smutty allegations, beat-ups and scandals.
The Murdoch media will be the first, and the most prolific, of all the smearers.
