Bush's 'war on terror' comes to a sudden end

[IDemo]

Obama signals that America's reach in battling enemies will not be limitless

ANALYSIS
By Dana Priest
updated 2 hours, 28 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Obama yesterday eliminated the most controversial tools employed by his predecessor against terrorism suspects. With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the "war on terror," as President George W. Bush had defined it, signaling to the world that the reach of the U.S. government in battling its enemies will not be limitless.

While Obama says he has no plans to diminish counterterrorism operations abroad, the notion that a president can circumvent long-standing U.S. laws simply by declaring war was halted by executive order in the Oval Office.

Key components of the secret structure developed under Bush are being swept away: The military's Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility, where the rights of habeas corpus and due process had been denied detainees, will close, and the CIA is now prohibited from maintaining its own overseas prisons. And in a broad swipe at the Bush administration's lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001.

It was a swift and sudden end to an era that was slowly drawing to a close anyway, as public sentiment grew against perceived abuses of government power. The feisty debate over the tactics employed against al-Qaeda began more than six years ago as whispers among confidants with access to the nation's most tightly held secrets. At the time, there was consensus in Congress and among the public that the United States would be attacked again and that government should do what was necessary to thwart the threat.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28807952/

[KharmaTrain]

1. Control The Language...Control The Debate

I musta missed it, but when did Congress declare "War"? If anything I was hoping that boooshie would be forced to do so and put his GOOPy toadies on record...and any spineless Democrat...put the blood squarely on their hands. But Congress was chickenshit...just gave little boots near dictatorial powers that he went and abused. The war ended up being against US.

Too bad it took over 8 years...over 4,000 American lives and thousands of Iraqis wasted...and for what? We're sure not any "safer"...nor was there any way we could be short of stationing a cop on every street corner. The ultimate shame is that the world's "greatest power" was like an elephant spooked by mice...trying to swat at ants with a 2 x 4.

Maybe, just maybe, we can get to the root cause of why we were attacked on 9/11 and understand that the world truly doesn't revolve around the United States.

Yes...the adults are back in charge.

[gratuitous]

3. Adults are back in charge

And the whiny-ass titty babies are already wetting themselves. This morning in the letters to the editor in the Oregonian, some guy from Vancouver was wetting his pants over liberal appeasement, and that two of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners had "freely admitted their guilt" in connection with 9/11. Yeah, and I'd be willing to bet that using the Guantanamo Bay Interrogation Methods, this garbanzo would be "freely admitting" his guilt, too. To anything I decided he needed to confess to.

The adults should ignore the petulant whining of the spoiled children.

[kentuck]

2. Bush's 'war on terror' comes to a sudden end !!!!!

Wow! Why isn't this bumped to the top???

[trof]

4. Next target: The War on Drugs?

One can hope.

[lunatica]

5. I'm almost in shock about this

I really thought President Obama would assign a committee or something to study the issue first. I guess I've become more jaded than I thought.

Our President is way ahead of us, and that's as it should be.