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TechnoratiThe NYT Sums up Obama's Civil Liberties Record in One Paragraph
Among progressives, Democrats, liberals, Obama supporters and the like, there seems to be some debate about the extent to which Obama deserves criticisms for what he has done thus far in the realm of civil liberties, restoration of Constitutional principles, and reversing the severe imbalance between "security" and liberties -- major planks of his two-year-long campaign and among the most frequent weapons used to criticize the Bush presidency. On that topic, here is the first paragraph of this New York Times article this morning by David Sanger, summing everything up:
President Obama's decisions this week to retain important elements of the Bush-era system for trying terrorism suspects and to block the release of pictures showing abuse of American-held prisoners abroad are the most graphic examples yet of how he has backtracked, in substantial if often nuanced ways, from the approach to national security that he preached as a candidate, and even from his first days in the Oval Office.
Here's how the NYT describes the article on its front page:
The opening paragraph of this Washington Post article today says much the same thing:
As a candidate for president, Barack Obama offered himself as a clear alternative to Bush-era anti-terrorism policies. Governing has proven muddier.
Both articles quote the hardest-core Bush supporters as heaping praise on Obama for what he has done in the area of "national security," terrorism and civil liberties ("Pete Wehner, a member of Karl Rove's staff in the Bush White House [and a current National Review writer] applauded several of Mr. Obama's decisions this week"). Indeed, all week long, and even before that, the greatest enthusiasm for Obama's decisions on so-called "terrorism policies" and civil liberties (with some important exceptions) has been found in the pages of The Weekly Standard and National Review.
Can anyone deny what the NYT and Post are pointing out today? This is what happened this week alone in the realm of Obama's approach to "national security" and civil liberties:
Monday - Obama administration's letter to Britian threatening to cut off intelligence-sharing if British courts reveal the details of how we tortured British resident Binyam Mohamed;
Tuesday - Promoted to military commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChyrstal, who was deeply involved in some of the worst abuses of the Bush era;
Wednesday - Announced he was reversing himself and would try to conceal photographic evidence showing widespread detainee abuse -- despite the rulings from two separate courts (four federal judges unanimously) that the law compels their disclosure;
Friday - Unveiled his plan to preserve a modified system of military commissions for trying Guantanamo detainees, rather than using our extant-judicial processes for doing so.
It's not the fault of civil libertarians that Obama did all of those things, just in this week alone. These are the very policies -- along with things like the claimed power to abduct and imprison people indefinitely with no charges of any kind and the use of the "state secrets privilege" to deny torture and spying victims a day in court -- that caused such extreme anger and criticisms toward the Bush presidency.
What would it say about a person who spent the last seven years vehemently criticizing those policies to suddenly decide that the same policies were perfectly fine or not particularly bothersome when Obama adopts them? How could that be justified? What should one say about a person who vehemently objected to X when Bush did it, but then suddenly found ways to defend or mitigate X when Obama does it? Just re-read that first paragraph from the NYT article today. What should a rational person say in response to what it describes?
It is absolutely true that there have been some important steps Obama has taken in the right direction that George Bush and John McCain would never have entertained, including banning interrogation techniques outside of the Army Field Manual, barring CIA secret prisons, guaranteeing International Red Cross access to all detainees, and releasing numerous Bush era OLC memos. He deserves praise for those decisions and has received it here. But other than the OLC memos, those steps all came in the very first week of his presidency in largely symbolic form. At the time, in the first week, I wrote that Obama's first-week executive orders "meet or actually exceed even the most optimistic expectations of civil libertarians for what he could or would do quickly," but:
This is why the understandable enthusiasm (which I definitely share) over Obama's pleasantly unexpected commitment in the first few hours of his presidency to take politically difficult steps in the civil liberties and accountability realms should be tempered somewhat. There is going to be very concerted pressure exerted on him by establishment guardians such as Hiatt (and the Brookings Institution, Jack Goldsmith and friends), to say nothing of hard-line factions within the intelligence community and its various allies, for Obama to take subsequent steps that would eviscerate much of this progress, that render these initial rollbacks largely empty, symbolic gestures. Whether these steps, impressive as they are, will be symbolic measures designed to placate certain factions, or whether they represent a genuine commitment on Obama's part, remains to be seen. Much of it will depend on how much political pressure is exerted and from what sides.
Obama deserves real praise for devoting the first few days of his presidency to these vital steps -- and doing so without there being much of a political benefit and with some real political risk. That's genuinely encouraging. But ongoing vigilance is necessary, to counter-balance the Fred Hiatts, Brookings Institutions and other national security state fanatics, to ensure that these initial steps aren't undermined.
Since that first week, Obama has engaged in one action after the next to preserve many of the key prongs, and the essential architecture, of the Bush/Cheney abuses of executive power and civil liberties. That's just factually true. What's the point of closing Guantanamo if we're going to continue to keep people indefinitely in cages with no trial in Bagram, or if we simply transport a modified version of Guantanamo justice to the U.S.? How can a President who repeatedly promised vast transparency embrace the most extremist Bush/Cheney secrecy powers? How can a person who campaigned on the vow to end "Scooter Libby justice" and restore the rule of law take one extreme step after the next to shield from judicial scrutiny some of the most serious, brutal and highest-level crimes of the last eight years?
It's certainly true that there are other issues besides civil liberties and national security policies that are important. The fact that he's been horrible in these areas doesn't mean he hasn't been good in others. One can argue, if one likes, that these civil liberties issues don't really matter (a representative of Center for American Progress joined with two conservatives to claim exactly that yesterday on CNN), or one can argue that all that matters is that we fix the banking crisis and implement a new health care policy. But I never heard any Bush critics -- not one -- say anything like that when these issues were front and center in the case against the Bush presidency.
Nobody who spent the last many years devoting themselves to opposing Bush/Cheney abuses of executive power and civil liberties wanted to have to do the same in an Obama presidency. If you doubt that, just look at how intense was the celebratory praise directed at Obama from those factions in the first week. But unless the opposition of the last eight years was really just a cynical means for opportunistically weakening and demonizing Republican opponents rather than opposing policies that one genuinely found dangerous and wrong, then the actions of Obama are leaving no other choice but to object and object strenuously. As the first paragraph of today's NYT article put it, this week alone provided "the most graphic examples yet of how [Obama] has backtracked, in substantial if often nuanced ways, from the approach to national security that he preached as a candidate, and even from his first days in the Oval Office." If nothing else, refraining from objecting will ensure that this continues further and further.
* * * * *
Yesterday morning, I was on WNYC's The Takeway discussing (briefly) the issue of Obama's military commissions and, more extensively, drug policy and decriminalization in Portugal. That can be heard here.
UPDATE: The Wall St. Journal Editorial Page today:
President Obama's endorsements of Bush-Cheney antiterror policies are by now routine . . . . Mr. Obama deserves credit for accepting that the civilian courts are largely unsuited for the realities of the war on terror. He has now decided to preserve a tribunal process that will be identical in every material way to the one favored by Dick Cheney . . . Meanwhile, friends should keep certain newspaper editors away from sharp objects. Their champion has repudiated them once again.
Meanwhile, Law Professor Julian Ku notes that Obama Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal spent years arguing that military commissions generally (not merely Bush's specific version) were oppressive and un-American (h/t). But now, thanks to Obama's embrace of them, Katyal is going to have to defend Obama's military commissions in court from challenge by the ACLU and other groups. At least Katyal has the excuse that defending exactly that which he spent years excoriating is his job. Obama supporters who are doing the same don't have that excuse.
UPDATE II: Illustrating the irrationality that is used, Obama defenders are making the following two arguments to justify what he did on military commissions:
(1) Obama had no choice because he can't obtain convictions of accused terrorists in civilian courts because so much of the evidence was obtained by Bush's torture and thus can't be used;
(2) Obama's military commissions are better than Bush's because Obama's commissions won't allow evidence obtained by torture.
Aren't those two propositions completely contradictory? If Obama's military commissions (like civilian courts and courts-martial) won't allow evidence obtained via torture, then why can't he use our normal court system to try accused terrorists?
50 Comments so far
Show AllCicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
To HoytDouglas who said, "When it would have been easy to change the system by voting for McKenney or Nader, you let your mind be hijacked by the symbolism of a 'black man' president.":
Changing the system is a hell of a lot harder than simply tossing enough votes to 3rd Party candidates in one general election cycle (to have likely put into power John McCain and whatshername from Alaska). To truly change the system progressives have to do the hard work of politically reorganizing the entire country from the grass roots up to put enough progressives into Congress to create a solid voting constituency for a future progressive presidential candidate to be able to do something with: At least enough true progressives in Congress to effectively straitjacket laissez-faire corporatists with regulation and law enforcement to pressure their votes for reform. There has to be enough progressive leverage inside and outside Congress to wield AND a true progressive in the White House to wield it.
While, sadly, too many people were desperate to support a black man as being somehow intrinsically "outside the system"--especially too many young people who are going to be reduced to angry cynicism when they realize what a waste of time Obama truly has become--there were other good reasons to vote for Obama before he fully revealed what a corporatist weakling he is.
The two main reasons why older progressives like myself voted for him were: (1) Because the enthusiasm he brought to the ticket from across the racial and age spectrum was unprecedented and he represented the best available challenge to the old and previously highly effective GOP Southern Strategy (to control Southern States by uniting Southern racist Dixiecrats, other white monied bigots, American exceptionalist--aka Manifest Destiny--militarists and white Christian fundamentalists). While Obama was clearly in hindsight a poser, as a candidate he was ideal to reflect the fundamental shift in racial and age demographics in this country over the last 25 years. (2) When Obama arose as a popular candidate his fellow Democrats were poised to achieve a more rock solid majority in both Houses of Congress and the White House than they had had in decades. Neither Cynthia McKinney nor Ralph Nader were in anything like a similar position in terms of being able to revel in a partisan landslide in their voting favor in Congress. Plenty of us older progressives wanted to see what the little (d) Democrats would try to do with their Party's solid majority and if they could finally sway the DLC Dimocrats. It was the Democratic Party's majority to use effectively or to throw away out of sheer corporate cravenness--as they are now doing. Now that they are approaching a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate they can no longer blame their backsliding on Republican opposition. Their tattered populist mask has been fully stripped off to expose the corporatist/militarist horror underneath. Job One for progressives right now is to do everything we can to call attention to that fact to the rest of the nation since the "mainstream media" and even the little "d" Democrats will not.
I grew up and still live in the Deep South and blacks down here overwhelmingly worship Obama with a, by turns, pathetically abject and ignorantly smug affectation. Even the urban hip-hop/rap culture kidz still wear his face on their hats and shirts like Obama equals 'Rage Against the Machine.' They will not hear of any criticism of the man and if you dare to get into specifics you will get replies like the one I got on the train two days back, "Well, of course you white people gonna put him down. He ain't been in there even 6 months!" He's too nearly a religious figure with them--young and old.
Former Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Niell (who started out as a brick layer) once observed that of all the many different minority groups that he grew up around in the violent streets of 1920s/1930s inner-city Boston, the ONLY ones who would never organize were the blacks. Down South it's worse than that. The Deep South is still deeply backwards when it comes to understanding unions or progressive organization of any kind. The blacks struggle to run a few city machines with major corruption problems but they don't organize well. Their city council meetings and school board meetings are a regional laughing stock of egoist psychobabble. Clayton County is case in point. The entire county lost its public school accreditation 3 years ago and still hasn't been able to even select a competent superintendent. Sadder yet, the Civil Rights generation of MLK is not grooming a successor generation ready to push the true economically just, anti-militarist ideals of Martin Luther King, Jr. All that's been fading since Coretta died.
As a result, southern blacks are going to be a drag on the nation as they insist on repeatedly voting for Obama simply because he is black. I hope Hispanics will view Obama with clearer eyes.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
My other comment relating to the subject of this article is that I am still astonished to see how willing progressives are to bitch about the situation and how unwilling they are to unite behind one Progressive Party banner with one shared, clear and concise platform. Even rag-tag Socialists in the 1920s and 1930s had the guts to get up and regail a crowd of workers with some unvarnished truth now and then in the form of a firebrand speech that exposed and eviscerated the public's true enemies. At least they shared the same thrust of ideas. At least there were still some newspapers that would publish or intelligently critique their remarks.
I hear NO discussion of a merging of progressive, pro-environment and anti-war groups and if they can't see the urgent need to rapidly organize at this point I don't want to live under what it will take to move them. If we don't move now we'll barely be able to squirm under the Fascist boot-heel by and by.
And the thing is, the Obama campaign machine has showed progressives exactly how to build an online grass roots juggernaut that brings the youth vote with it. It's too bad that Ralph Nader is getting on in years because we need a young fire-eating Nader now more than ever--one without his old battle scars with the Democratic Party establishment. Cynthia McKinney is too easy to attack for her father's blatant anti-Semitism. Cindy Sheehan is too openly anti-militarist and it will take LBJ-like closed-door iron fist legislative infighting and subterfuge to begin to re-leash the run amok military industrial complex. Progressives need some younger top notch candidates, but I am convinced the time has never been more ripe for the creation of an effective Progressive third Party.
The time has also never been more ripe for the creation of new forms of progressive mass news media designed to do continuous end runs around the rapidly decaying corporate "mainstream media." The more these new prog media platforms are student/activist driven the better.
hoytdouglas whaaaaaaaaaat? too funny! and to think we haven't even gotten around to the supreme court battles where he
caves in again!
Anyone who is surprised by Obama's horrible policies is a fool. He signaled when he was running that he would be a supporter of the war in Afghanistan, that only the "combat troops" would eventually be withdrawn from Iraq. He supported immunity for phone and internet tappers. His policies in supporting secret torture, suppressing prosecutions of war crimes, continuation of illegal military tribunals, and on and on, were signaled clearly to anyone willing to look with an open eye. We have no one to blame but ourselves.
True what you write, but the sheeple have spoken: Obbbaaaaaammaahh, Obbbaaaaaaahmaaahhh.
It's a basic law of politics:
Once you start calling your fellow party members racists, your party is dead.
It took Obama 100 days to commit to Bush's policies for maintaining "security". Should have voted for McCain-he was cdommited to Bush from the get go. For what it's worth we are 100 days behind in securing World Domination.
I formerly thought of alternative parties as vote wasters at best and spoilers at worst, but the Democrats have proven to be as corrupt, disingenuous, contemptuous of the Constitution, laws and people, warmongering and dictatorial as the Republicans.
The only answer is, in the short term, to get enough Greens into the House in 2010 to deny the Democrats a majority and thus force them to compromise somewhat, and in the longer run to take advantage of the demise of the Republicans by offering a fresh perspective.
It will take hard work and grassroots efforts to overcome the advantages of incumbency and big-money backers, but it can be done.
If every person who voted for Obama, and especially the morons who developed a crush on a politician, wrote the following letter to Obama, he might get the message...
The letter reads...
Want to be the first Black American to be a one-term president? Keep assuming I will vote for you as you trash my values, and show yourself to be either a liar, or unwilling to stand up to power, which is why you were elected.
I agree that maybe he got the warning briefing first, but, you know what, power is power. You don't request it, you take it. Totally alienating his base is a mistake. Reagan used the people to change direction. That's what it takes. Obama had a huge mandate. The military stuff is sort of comprehensible. The health care and union organizing capitulation is NOT.
Dont worry, folks. The wheels are really coming off this economy this fall, and, after a summer of slaughter, the US public will go nuts.
Unfortunately, the stupid right-wing is also going nuts. Its important for the left wing to stress what we have in common with the right.
i was going to work for him here in ny. all ready to go until the telecom 4th amendment
rollover. i told the people in his campaign this was going to happen. whom i won't name. they know who they are and they post here sometimes. a total continuation of king george
war policies. if you teach at u of c you ain't no dem. look at all the rightwingers to come
out of there. obama$ bought and paid for and now we have to put some massive
pressure on him to get him back in line. washington sit ins and demonstrations anyone?
befrgl
When you have been selected by the insiders to run the country for a while......it's really easy to manipulate a man who has a loving wife and two beautiful daughters..... they could be in danger....... just do as you are told, and everything will be fine. You don't have to be told twice.
Greenwood said:
"Nobody who spent the last many years devoting themselves to opposing Bush/Cheney abuses of executive power and civil liberties wanted to have to do the same in an Obama presidency. If you doubt that, just look at how intense was the celebratory praise directed at Obama from those factions in the first week."
=================================
True. I remember receiving a newsletter from the head of CCR essentially praising the kind of president was soon to be sworn in... of course, the letter was also a way to drum of some cash... but I was really taken back by the letter.
I had never seen anything political like it from CCR in the last 8 years. I did not, however, see anything like that from ACLU.
CCR is still a valuable resource and took up the cause to fight for the rights of all and to defend our constitution....
http://ccrjustice.org/
the night of the election, in Chicago, when Obama said,'change has happened'...he was only being honest in the fact that America had voted for a man of mixed race...
now, we have a man who is doing the cowardly things his predecessor accomplished. Breaking laws. All I know is that this is a one term president...keep up the good work, Barry
yeah, and I could've voted for Nader or Ron Paul and at least brought honesty, truth and american pie back to the White House...
I think that I threw my vote away.
Time to start talking about war crimes and impeachment again.
It's too early to impeach Obama, even if the morons in congress would go through the motions.
It is possible that he could still turn things around. It would take brave and aggressive actions on his part.
The last young Democrat to stand up to the MIC caught a round or 2.
Time is the fourth dimension they say....
Re: The last young Democrat to stand up to the MIC caught a round or 2.
Why do we expect more courage from the men and woman of the reserves, many who objected to the occupations in Iraq and Afganistan but must face death there regardless, than we expect from our politicans who we would expect to face enemies both internal and external. Obama, Pelosi, the men and women of Congress and of the Senate asked us for the positions. Would that they would possess and display the courage they expect from our troups and accept the important responsibility of facing internal enemies. JFK, RK, MLK, Wellstone, all knew what they faced but carried on despite the dangers.
What makes you think he will turn things around AGAIN...? I mean , he already turned his campaign promises on their head. He had the opportunity to do the right thing... with the backing of most americans, and he blew it. Now he will appear weak if he backpeddles again. Lets start thinking of 2012. This guy's got to go.
This is very fucked up. Is our president a lier or not. I spent my vote( very valuable to me)on this guy because he preached about how fucked up the things bush was doing and how his top priority was going to be given us our rights back. Have the insurance companies and banks got something that scary to show the pres.after he gets into office that he's willing to immediately go over to the dark side. I think It's time sombody outted that shit.
I guess once you get into the Dark Side it takes a revolution to get out.
Oregoncharles
For starts:
is anyone suggesting that all those who want single-payer health care just drop their $corporate health insurance$ all on the same day? How many progressives would do such a thing? It's scary. Like McCain/Palin.
Scary? What could be more scary than corporate America running your government? If you're basically healthy, what's there to be afraid of? I suspect it wouldn't take long for Washington and the insurance companies to arrive at a reasonable solution to the health care problem if they were losing $billions in profit for just one quarter.
It is cheaper and better to stay healthy than buy insurance.
Greenwald is as objective as possible and his last paragraph is an insightful wakeup call.
Based on John Dean's recent article, I would surmise that by disallowing evidence obtained by torture, Obama may be giving the military commissions a chance to clean up their own act. Short-term, it looks like tone-deaf elitism, but, long-term, it may be a smart move.
I really don't know how to defend most of the week's activities.
Dean's analysis is better than O's move. I don't doubt that it's politically efficacious, but O's move means that we have to put more pressure on government to curb its dogs.
Sioux Rose
JOSHUA: Add it to the bankers' bailout, and then you have a lot MORE explaining to do, if you're still "standing by your man."
"He deserves praise for those decisions..."
No, he does not. What - am I the only one who remembers how this game is played?
He tosses his supporters crumbs to keep them sated while doing exactly what his owners tell him to do, (owners, as in, "frankly, they own the place.")
The banksters own the place; the military-contractor complex own the place; the major transnational corporations who could give a flying f@#k about this or any country own the place.
Employees do what their owners want or they're fired. Period.
Boo hoo, oh it's so sad and disheartening that BO is doing what he's told because we were so sure he was gonna defy them for the health and well-being of We The People because he... he... promised! Whaaa!
Now, get over it, accept the facts, and adapt accordingly.
There must be a certain level of schadenfreude ringing around the CD forums. If you go back to the summer of '08 when Obama endorsed the FISA ammendments we could all see the writing was on the wall. Then when he supported the Bush bailout in October it was writ large: Obama is nothing more than an MIC/ Wall Street shill. Sure he "tosses his supporters crumbs" but if you look at those in context he's just a bit of nice window dressing for the US corporate empire. The progressives here have known this for a long time, but the sooner liberals figure this out the better. I'm sick of liberals defending him because he's better than Bush. An inanimate carbon rod would be better than Bush.
There I've had my political rant for the day and managed to squeeze in my required Simpson's quote to boot.
Declan
Oregoncharles
What do you have in mind, that, all on one day, serious proponents for single-payer health care stop paying their insurance premiums? ouch.
Yes. Write a letter, not a check.
I can't believe that this is the same man I worked for and contributed to during the campaign and voted for, plus convinced innumerable people to do the same.
He has just appointed Cheney's torturer-in-chief to run the Afghanistan war theatre, the same General McChrystal who ran torture Camp Namo in Iraq and allegedly covered up Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire.
Is there no Democrat or Independent fluent in Mandarin and knowledgable about China available to head one of the most important embassies in the world? The Republican governor of Utah, national co-chair of McCain's campaign????
96 more billion dollars, extra-budget, for war requested by Obama and approved by the House.
Single payer off the table so the health industrialists can continue scamming the people out of decent health care while taking 1/3 of the health care dollar off the top for their admin, salaries, stockholder dividends, marketing, etc.
All the backtracking on torture and habeas corpus as descibed in this excellent article.
He has appointed the financial foxes to rebuild the economic hencoop and the Bush military leftovers to run the wars they have screwed up. Remember that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeldt fired and/or retired all the generals who opposed or criticized their handling of the wars, so what we have left are those willing to ignore the legalities and use white phosphorus, drones on civilians, torture, and more.
If David Plouffe writes you asking for money, tell him what you said here.
Joe
mcurie,
When it would have been easy to change the system by voting for McKenney or Nader, you let your mind be hijacked by the symbolism of a "black man" president.
Well, what are you going to do about it? Stop whining.
Voting for McKinney or Nader as president would do virtually nothing. I understand placing the vote as a sort of protest, but if you understand the relationship between congress and the president - that the congress members are the ones who MAKE the laws, not the president - then you understand that, even if by some miracle one of them won the presidency, they'd be virtually impotent because their party wouldn't have a single representative in congress, so absolutely nothing would happen.
As he watches his children play soccer, women and children are being killed by his mercenaries and soldiers.
Unless, those who actually put the thermite in World Trade Center #7 are found and the true murderers of 9/11 are brought to justice, The American People will be duped into supporting the next expansion into the Middle East......Iran has never invaded another country in over 2000 years of history and yet they know they are going to be attacked by Israel and the United States without a Bush/Cheney in charge....
Raytheon can take the control of any plane away from any pilot and change the course of history........."Shock and Awe".
"God have mercy on us all."
Welcome to life!
Sioux Rose
M CURIE: Well-said. This must be how persons feel right after a trainwreck knowing they're still alive but assessing the damage.
Good mCurie 3:52 !!!!!!! Kudos !!!!!!!!!!
Tillman's suspicious death by close range friendly fire.
don't trust any free marketer in the republican or democratic party. Free marketers worship markets, corporate welfare and elitism. Markets come before the constitution or the republic, the people. We must go back to regulated capitalism and a mixed economy with a constitutional republic form of government. Government is not a business for Wall Street, nor should it be run like a business.
People First in a republic. We the people must demand this!
Has he read 'My Pet Goat'?
Recommended reading for dicta-umm, U.S. Presidents.
It is becoming all too clear that Obama is being steam rolled, by no other than himself.
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."
John Adams (1735 - 1826), Journal, 1772
Excellent John Adams quote !!
Poor ol' B-Rack, he's like putty in their hands.
Bring America Back !!!!...Today, Prez Obama appoints a Republican Governor of Utah to a high Administration Office .
**Who, in his right mind, would allow a Neocon Right wing Radical war monger to remain in Office as Sec of Defense ?
**By continuing the Third Term of Bush, Obama has earned a room in the King George Presidntial Library in Texas, but that guarantees also Obama will be a one-term office holder.
WAKE UP AMERICA !! Get Kucinich in there..what kind of pet dog does he like ?
Kucinich would go the way of JFK, RFK, MLK et al.....AND do you seriously think TPTB would let him anywhere near that oath of office??
So we should surrender up front. Concern troll.
It doesn't quite seem fair to put MLK in the same category as JFK and RFK.
Yeah, let's watch who we're sanctifying here. Look at the Bay of Pigs invasion, to use just the readiest example.
It was proven in a civil suit that the US government murdered MLK,
http://www.thekingcenter.org/KingCenter/Transcript_trial_info.aspx