It is is absolutely appalling and infuriating and disturbing that so many supporters and defenders of President Obama ignore his cavalier attitude towards the rights of American Citizens and so called belligerents.
President Obama proves over and over again that he is not a defender of the basic rights of American citizens let alone the rights on non-US citizens.
Obama like President Bush and Dick Cheney see these issues as merely a matter of semantics.
Obama is still supporting the notion of indefinite detention of US citizens . He has also added to this the legal use of US military against US citizens .
Obama has also made it legal to assassinate US citizens along with non-US Citizens .
Obama claims the US no longer uses torture techniques on detainees and yet he has approved the use of Enhanced interrogation techniques on alleged terrorists or those deemed enemies of the state.
The enhanced Interrogation techniques when reviewed are just more "torture Techniques' dressed up to appear benign and as being within international law which in fact they are not.
As I have mentioned previously President Obama has also defended the use of banned weapons such as Cluster bombs, White phosphorus/Napalm on civilians and the use of Drones against civilian targets and the use of landmines and Bunker Buster Bombs and the right if necessary to use Nuclear Weapons in a first strike.
Obama also refuses to release the prisoners in Guantanamo or other military or CIA detention centers many of whom have never been formally charged or tried in an open civilian court. Instead Obama and others on his staff assure us as Cheney did that these are the worst of the worst.
President Obama has also resisted the pleas of Human Rights organizations and International law to sign on to the Child Soldier designation by which Child Soldiers are to be treated not as belligerents or enemy combatants but as victims who are in need of rehabilitation not brutal draconian incarceration.
As we have seen in the case of alleged wikileaks whistleblower Bradley Manning Obama has justified holding him prisoner for about two years and has kept him in solitary confinement for most of that time.
Extended internment in solitary confinement is considered by international law as cruel and unusual punishment tantamount to torture.
Dem Think-tank on NDAA: Obama Says He Won't Detain Citizens, and That's Good Enough for Us!
Ken Gude of the so-very-closely-aligned-with-Obama Center for American Progress offers up the dumbest argument you'll find in defense of the detention provisions contained in the National Defense Authorization Act.
It is so dumb, in fact, that it disputes itself. Behold:
The detainee provisions are seriously flawed, but it is inaccurate and irresponsible to claim, as both the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch have, that this bill represents a return to the “McCarthy era.” This argument overlooks the key factor in assessing the scope of military detention. President Obama has made clear he does not want military detention in the United States, and Congress has already recognized that he has discretionary power to interpret detention authority to rule that out.
Obama says he won't consign American citizens to military detention, and that's good enough for us!
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