The Obama administration will announce plans today to revive the Bush-era military commission system for prosecuting terrorism suspects, current and former officials said, reversing a campaign pledge to rely instead on federal courts and the traditional military justice system.
Word of the decision infuriated human rights groups, which argued that any trials under the system created by President George W. Bush would be widely viewed as tainted. They said President Obama was duplicating Bush's mistakes.
The announcement would follow other moves by Obama that have disappointed his administration's liberal allies but heartened Bush supporters, including his decisions to withhold photos depicting alleged abuse of detainees by U.S. soldiers and to retain the option of using a limited form of rendition, the practice of turning terrorism suspects over to other countries for questioning.
White House officials insisted Thursday that Obama was not overturning a campaign pledge. The president "never promised to abolish" military commissions, an administration official said. But Obama repeatedly called for change.
"It's time to better protect the American people and our values by bringing swift and sure justice to terrorists through our courts and our Uniform Code of Military Justice," Obama said in August.
Of course, the claim is that Obama will make "changes" to how the tribunals are handled but he now for, what he previously was against when it was the Bush administration doing it.
It was easy to criticize Bush for Obama and the Democrats and all their liberal supporters, but once Obama stepped into Bush's place, he started seeing that not everything was as black and white and he previously misled his supporters to believe it was.
Question here is, will the same people that freaked out when Bush did these same things, freak out now that it is Obama doing them?
Some will.
Will the most ardent Obama supporters?
Doubtful..they will excuse, hem and haw, "explain" why for Obama it is different, but the bottom line here is, Obama lied to his supporters to get their support and now he is faced with the reality of his position and the consequences of making the wrong decisions just to keep his campaign pledges.
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