Yet Another President Odubya Moment

If anyone's consistently been in Obama's face about our failed torture policy, it's been Glenn Greenwald. That makes today's Double G column all the more interesting as he notes the NY Times is finally coming around to note that Obama is continuing these Bush policies (emphasis his):

That's what makes this morning's scathing condemnation of Obama so notable. As suggested by the editorial's headline -- "The Cover-Up Continues" -- the NYT accuses Obama of complicity in shielding Bush war crimes from disclosure and accountability, and worse, details the numerous, radical Bush/Cheney powers embraced by Obama in order to accomplish this. It begins this way:

The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration’s expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush’s cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama’s cover-up.

We have had recent reminders of this dismaying retreat from Mr. Obama’s passionate campaign promises to make a break with Mr. Bush’s abuses of power, a shift that denies justice to the victims of wayward government policies and shields officials from accountability.

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The numerous examples provided by the NYT are all well-known to readers here. Contrary to the central strawman invariably raised by his defenders, none of the complaints is grounded in the objection that Obama "has failed to act quickly enough" to repudiate Bush/Cheney abuses. Let's repeat that: none of the criticisms of Obama from the NYT today -- or from civil libertarians generally -- is grounded in the complaint that he hasn't acted quickly enough. The opposite is true: the complaint is that he has actively and affirmatively embraced those very policies as his own -- the very policies which Democrats and liberals almost unanimously claimed for years they found so offensive and dangerous -- and he has vigorously defended them and repeatedly applied them in numerous circumstances.

And Greenwald continues to be correct, as he has been on this issue since January. As I have said on many occasions, the issue where Obama's policy is Bush policy, especially on the Warren Terrah, is reprehensible and I will call out the President on it. I'm glad to see the Times join the fight, but this is nothing new, folks.

Obama is actively adopting and strengthening Bush's torture policy, period. Welcome to the realization it took you just nine months to find, NY Times.