It would seem today marks Barack Obama’s one-hundredth day in office. And with such a mile-stone reached came the warranted, yet slightly misguided, review of all he has accomplished by the media. Fair enough. But the emphasis has been unduly placed on where he differs from Bush, as opposed to his reckless similarities;
“In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush’s gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice. On 24 April, his lawyers won an appeal that ruled Guantanamo Bay prisoners were not “persons”, and therefore had no right not to be tortured. His national intelligence director, Admiral Dennis Blair, says he believes torture works. One of his senior US intelligence officials in Latin America is accused of covering up the torture of an American nun in Guatemala in 1989; another is a Pinochet apologist. As Daniel Ellsberg has pointed out, the US experienced a military coup under Bush, whose secretary of “defence”, Robert Gates, along with the same warmaking officials, has been retained by Obama.”
“Change we can believe in?” John Pilger‘s not so sure and argues The Mad Men Did Well, in these first 100 days. Interesting…