Obama uses a lot of verbal gyrations, makes a few very cosmetic changes and then ends up reconfirming the effective Bush policy - the policy Bush came up with 7 years ago and the policy the left has been braying about ever since. But, Obama is hailed as "thoughtful" because he didn't come straight to the obvious, while Bush was called "stupid" for reaching the correct conclusion in absence of precedence and in the face of an onslaught of hypocritial and opportunistic second guessing.

What's amazing to me is how the left is incapable of embarrasement.

I'll say this for Gleen Greenwald, a pundint almost always disagree with - he is at least honest enough to acknowledge there has been no break from Bush policy on these matter. I'm sure that honesty won't extend to the comments below.

The imbecility of the "right"--in scare quotes for so many reasons these days-- is frightening. Cheney is a thanatophile, nothing more, using a crude logical trick to convince credulous folks like you that it must be true since you can't prove it to be false, or that it must be false since you can't prove it to be true.

Look, friend, Cheney is trying to do two things, and two things only: forestall the inevitable (and long, and very tiresome, and very ugly) investiagtion into his administration's rather loose interpretation of the law; and blame the next guy for his own failure to stop the known, recorded attack in 2001. For this last bit we credit his creativity.

Then again, the ill-tempered monster should take a cue from his old boss and clam up.

the effective Bush policy

If it was so effective, why did they abandon the use of waterboarding and other techniques after 2004? And how do they explain that we have been "kept safe" since that time even though we haven't used those techniques? And if those techniques are so effective, why weren't they used more widely on other detainees? And if the important thing is to keep us safe, why limit them to foreign detainees? Why not use them on Americans?

I disagree with Obama on the use of miltary tribunals and the idea of indefinite preventative detention. I think whatever marginal risk we take by living up to our principles is the price we pay for living in a free society. We could live in a police state with cameras in every corner and where the government could search anyone or any place at any time for any reason or for no reason, but we choose not to live in such a country even though it seems to me that we would be safer.

And it's simply not accurate to say Obama has the same polices as Bush. He has banned "enhanced interrogation." He wants to try those detainees who can be tried (which Bush made little effort to do). While he wants to continue military commissions for those who violated the rules of war, he has proposed doing so with greater procedural protections in place. And while he has proposed indefinite detention, he has also said that such a decision should not rest with one person (as it essentially did under Bush) but should have the input of Congress and the judiciary and be subject to periodic review with a real process in place. As I wrote, I disagree with the commissions and the preventative detention proposals, but what Obama proposes is not the same as under Bush which was essentially unchecked executive power.

So, Bush stopped using enhanced interregation techniques in '04-05, and just kept the option on the table.

Obama is against using enhanced interegation techniques, but preserves the right to keep the option on the table?

How is Obama effectively different?

Obama is against using enhanced interegation techniques, but preserves the right to keep the option on the table?

My understanding is that he is not keeping "the option on the table." Those techniques are banned for now while the Justice Department studies which if any of those techniques are actually legal. I assume that the techniques that are not legal will be taken off the table. That's very different from the Bush approach, where apparently anything the interregators wanted to do was legal (bending the law to fit the requeted technique). I also assume that waterboarding will be taken off the table, since from what I've read it's pretty clearly illegal (we've prosecuted others for it).