When Clinton was busy throwing liberals under the bus, it was being tried for the first time. This time Obama has the benefit of Clinton's experience which makes his current moves worse. On the other hand, during the Clinton years, the Internet itself was still a geeks playground and hadn't acheived the critical mass that now allows us to speak with a surprisingly coherent voice. This makes Obamas current moves seem even more tone-deaf and boneheaded!

we want himt to examine all the policies and people and make informed decisions about which ones to keep and which to discard?

That it is precisely because we are armed with information over who supprts or opposes particular policies, that we may have strong opinions over who should lead our intelligence agencies. Taking advice from someone who doesn't know Shiite from Shinola but nevertheless is all for allowing 'flexibility' to individual agents is a recipe for disaster.

That concern with these issues flags one as being "Liberal"

Part of the story-line thats being pushed these days, is that Obama is Pissing Off "the left" by appointing too many 'centrists" to his cabinet. What all these accounts fail to distinguish is that the people who are pushing for a progressive economic agenda and those of us who are pressing for an end to our beligerent, unproductive and human-rights abusive foreign policy stance are not necessarily the same people and that in particular a respect for human rights is not a peculiarly leftist position.

I made a similar point here:

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2008/12/09/in-search-of-disappointed-liberals/#comment-26523

(also on sig)

First I'll C/P what i left in a Scherer thread

This represents a nice opportunity to kvetch about labelling in the first place. Opposing torture and demanding transparency and accountability are NOT leftist positions. The liberal blogosphere has represntatives with a wide variety of views and plenty of room for disagreement among them. What they don't have is patience for people who are willing to tell them what they are thinking or describe them in the third person without addressing who they are as individuals.

I personally don't care if Obama appoints any self-identified 'progressives' to his cabinet but if he doen't take a firm stand against rendition and torture and 'preemptive warfare' that targets innocents then I'm indeed going to be PO'ed.

Of course using association with marginal ideas as a lead weight to attach to good ideas in order to sink the whole package is an old right-wing tactic. It's disappointing to see the same tools being used by the center-left.

anytime Glenn Greenwald and Michael Scherer find themselves on the same side of an issue, then you know that potential targets have reason to get nervous. The sad part is that they indeed have a preinstalled conduit through which to push back. I have a feeling though, that the more we learn, the more we're going to want to learn and the snowball will soon be rolling down the mountain taking the worst of the abusers with it.

I reccomend reading:

The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration (Hardcover)

by Jack L. Goldsmith (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/Terror-Presidency-Judgment-Inside-Administration/dp/0393065502

His book is classic CYA over why he couldn't sign off on Yoo's worse excesses but he clearly articulates the view that "The Law" is a weapon that is wielded by the bad guys. It's quite revealing to realize that these people actually regard the will of the electorate as expessed in acts of Congress as something to be fought rather than the whole edifice they're supposed to be defending.

It's just a totally different way of thinking and if you don't understand it as an outsider than very little else that goes on in DC makes any sense whatsoever.

So forgive me if I'm off base but the main justification that I can come up with for backing off the "Field Manual" language is that the Field manual is not classified and can therefore be trained against. Perhaps I'm being naively optimistic but I happen to beleive that its possible to write a law that will effectively outlaw torture while providing interrogators with the comfort of knowing that their captors aren't sure what they're facing. The problem isn't writing such a law. The problem is actually subjecting CIA agents and soldiers to punishment if they fail to comply. As you have amply documented, such a result is almost unthinkable among Washington insiders.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2008/0811.homans.html

But I'm interested in your reaction to this article. It seems to be trying to address that worst of the problems with BushCo secrecy, but it's prescription seems a bit bland to my taste.

The way your using the word currently ideology seems to be synonymous with 'morality, but it also has a slightly different meaining. When we're speaking of warfare, torture, terrorism and for that matter, abortion, ideology refers to our core beleifs of right and wrong. If on the other hand, we are discussing supply side economic theories, whether there's such a thing as 'forces of history' or whether there are inherent bahavioral differences between the sexes, we might use the word ideology but it has a completely different meaning. The difference is that the second set of issues have 'correct' answers that are ascertainable by experimentation and observation. No such enlightenment is available for the first set of issues. For this reason, when we refer to BushCo being guided by ideology, we are actually referring to a set of assumptions about the results of actions. In this case those assuptions are blindingly wrong. Buiit that is independent of their morality.