Obama’s Great Illusion

Yvonne Ridley
Information Clearing House
June 3, 2009

I wonder how many of you have woken up to the fact that America’s latest leader is really a political Houdini … an illusionist on a presidential scale.

In front of our very eyes he has morphed from a gentle intellectual, and strong defender of human rights into a war-mongering bully who sponsors targetted assassinations and orders pre-emptive strikes with casual ease.

It took George W. Bush years before he dared to unveil his true intentions and invade Iraq, displacing three million people in a war which cost the lives of thousands of US soldiers and the slaughter of countless civilians.

Whereas the smooth-talking Obama has achieved the same in just a few months since he arrived in The White House by launching an illegal war on Pakistan … but he’s using someone else’s army instead of his own.

He is twice as clever as the previous White House incumbent and far, far more deadly. Obama is quite possibly one of the world’s most skillful manipulators and his greatest illusion so far is fooling the public as well as the media.

While blatantly using Pakistan’s army as a cheap source of military labour he holds the country’s leader Asif Ali Zadari in suspended animation, trapped helplessly in an almost hypnotic state, induced by the promise of millions of dollars and the support of the world’s biggest military machine.

Of course we must lay some blame at Zadari’s feet for allowing himself to be used like a magician’s assistant instead of acting with the dignity and honour his office, country and people demand.

Obama is far more lethal than his predecessor – and yet his transformation from Mr Nice Guy to something more sinister seems to have gone largely unnoticed by the world’s watching media which appears to be intoxicated by the powerful charisma emanating from his rich, but smooth seductive tones.

 

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He has already reneged on promises over closing down Guantanamo, ending military tribunals and releasing to the public the entire archive of shame which captured the torture and abuse of the previous administration’s War on Terror in video and film from 2001 onwards.

 

Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee remarked recently over one of his u-turns: “President Obama has recently granted immunity to CIA agents … if the desire to get at what went wrong is so blatantly covered up under cover of “national security concerns”, there will be no end to this. And once again, the warmongers will get away with another odious and criminal cover-up”.

He has the power to make Guantanamo’s vile prison disappear and for a few glorious weeks human rights activists across the world waited with baited breath for the cages of Cuba, Bagram and elsewhere to fly open.

Just how difficult is it for the media to dip into their own archives and remind Obama about the pledges he made on the campaign trail and hold him to account? His first promise on the White House website was that his administration would be the most transparent in US history. Sadly these grand statements have not been followed through.

But this journalistic amnesia is all too convenient – what happened to his determination to bring home all combat troops from Iraq within 18 months?

Is there no journalist from the White House lobby prepared to remind him of how he said during televised presidential debates that getting Usama bin Ladin was “our biggest national security priority”? Perhaps the hypnotic Obama Affect has wiped their computer hard-drives and their memories but if you listen to his very first TV interview as the Commander-in-Chief of America he said Usama was more than a symbol.

His actual words were: “He’s also the operational leader of an organization that is planning attacks against U.S. targets,” adding that “capturing or killing bin Ladin is a critical aspect of stamping out al-Qaida.”

Having secured the votes from red neck territory by saying Obama will get Usama, he now says that killing or capturing the al-Qaida chief is no longer necessary to “meet our goal of protecting America.”

However, American Armenians are not so gullible and quite a few were shocked out of their trance following the US President’s recent visit to Turkey when he executed with the greatest of ease yet another presidential flip flop.

“As President, I will recognise the Armenian genocide,” he declared loud and proud during his campaign, but when he arrived in Turkey he sort of muttered, when asked about the hugely sensitive subject: “My views are on the record, and everyone knows my views.” And then he refused to elaborate and state them!

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant” said Obama before he took the keys to the White House – may be that’s why, when I watch the US President perform under the glare of the spotlights on the world stage, I can see something of the night lurking around his presidential shadows.

There are a few of us who are immune to the charms of the new president. Like me, they believe that the sheep’s clothing has vanished and what we now have is a dangerous wolf stalking the corridors of power on Capitol Hill.

Yes, there’s a new act in the White House these days but while Harry Houdini built his reputation performing death-defying escapes and magic tricks his political Doppelganger is certainly the master of dark arts and mass illusion.

This president has gone from charming to harming and few have noticed.

Cheney: Death only option for some detainees if Gitmo closed

 

By Jon Ward (Contact) | Monday, June 1, 2009

UPDATED:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that the only alternative to holding some suspected terrorists indefinitely would be to execute them, arguing against the Obama administration’s plans to close the Guantanamo detainee prison.

“If you’re going to be engaged in a world conflict such as we are, such as the global war on terrorism, if you don’t have a place where you can hold these people, your only other option is to kill them,” Mr. Cheney said.

“And we don’t operate that way.”

The former vice president’s statements only raise the stakes in fierce debate with his critics, who believe Mr. Cheney presided over the formulation of interrogation techniques that they regard as torture and remains unapologetic for approving waterboarding and other harsh methods used.

Mr. Cheney bases his argument on the view that suspected terrorists should be considered prisoners of war and said such persons “ought to be held until the end of the conflict.

He also criticized the Obama administration for failing to think through its plans to shutter Guantanamo.

“The administration made a mistake of the president issuing an order that he wants it closed within a year, but didn’t have a clue as to how to proceed,” Mr. Cheney said. “And now they’re having trouble because they’re having to come up with a plan of some kind.”

Mr. Cheney, who has become the most prominent figure to defend the Bush administration’s record on terror and national security, spoke and took questions at a lunch honoring journalism award winners at the National Press Club.

The former vice president said that the Guantanamo Bay prison is “a fine facility” and that the White House will have a “very difficult” time closing it, because of the legal, political and diplomatic challenges associated with indefinite detention.

Mr. Obama has indicated that even after Guantanamo’s closure, the government will still hold some detainees in prolonged detention. He has also restarted the military commissions process to try some detainees there instead of in civilian courts, following a Bush-era policy.

In arguing for the continued use of Guantanamo, Mr. Cheney cited recent press reports that said about 14 percent of the more than 500 prisoners released from Guantanamo have returned to what he called that jihad business. However, more recent reporting has indicated that the recidivism rate among freed detainees is likely much lower.

Mr. Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo, however, was praised by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu during a visit to Washington.

For the psychological atmosphere the symbolic issues are important, Mr. Davutoglu said during an interview with a small group of journalists at his Washington hotel. Many things in our region are psychological.

But on the domestic political front, one of the leading contenders for the Republican nomination to run against Mr. Obama in 2012, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, took aim at the president’s foreign policy and defense budget cuts.

Mr. Romney characterized Mr. Obama’s last two trips abroad as a tour of apology and criticized signs from the White House that they might back off a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

“Arrogant, delusional tyrants can’t be stopped by earnest words and furrowed brows,” Mr. Romney said. “Action, strong bold action coming from a position of strength and determination, is the only effective deterrent.”

North Korea and Iran were two of the topics that Mr. Cheney admitted the Bush administration did fall short on.

We didn’t bat 1,000. No question about it. And Iran and North Korea are still out there, Mr. Cheney said in response to a question about the growth of nuclear programs in both regimes during the eight years that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were in office. I wish we could have done more, but those are problems that are passed on to the next administration.

But Mr. Cheney did assign responsibility to the CIA for both the pre-war intelligence prior to the invasion of Iraq, and for proposing the enhanced interrogation techniques that have been the cause of so much controversy.

The former vice president also said that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is not the threat he once was.

I don’t think he can have much impact in terms of managing the organization, because that link between Obama and the people under him is pretty fragile, Mr. Cheney said, inserting the president’s first name for bin Laden’s, a gaffe committed in the past by numerous politicians.

I don’t think he has the capacity to do as much harm as he did at one point, but we ought to still continue to chase him, Mr. Cheney said of bin Laden.