We have to confront a painful question about our President. Many of us were convinced that he would be very different from his predecessor in matters of civil liberties. He is not. The distance between our expectations and reality is a failure that must be explained. So what happened?

While you have assembled lots of good categories that may explain why Obama is behaving this way, reasons aren't really important. 1. They don't change anything. These terrible decisions will continue as they have been for many months now. 2. Even if Obama told you why he was defending horrible Bush policies, would anyone trust what he told you now? I wouldn't!

If one of your reasons is valid that many Americans were conned by Obama, how could he explain himself now to you or anyone else? If it was someone else's fault, he either agreed with them at the time or appointed the wrong people to certain positions. If he isn't in charge than he's also a failure as a leader. All you end up doing is picking your own poison.

It's much better as Glenn is doing to just examine these decisions for what they are and represent without trying to find excuses and reasons for them. Reasons are a dime a dozen.

From Sourcewatch (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Alicia_C._Shepard#_note-Shepard):

In April 2008, David Barstow from the New York Times revealed that in early 2002 the Pentagon military analyst program had been launched by then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke. The idea was to recruit "key influentials" to help sell a wary public on "a possible Iraq invasion." Former NBC military analyst Kenneth Allard called the effort "psyops on steroids."[3]

One of the 75 analysts mentioned in Barstow's original story was Robert H. Scales Jr., who appeared on programs for both NPR and Fox News programs. Barstow noted that Scales, "whose consulting company advises several military firms on weapons and tactics used in Iraq, wanted the Pentagon to approve high-level briefings for him inside Iraq in 2006.'Recall the stuff I did after my last visit,' he wrote. 'I will do the same this time.'"[3] In 2003 Scales co-founded a "defense consulting company" Colgen, which boasts that it is "America's Premier Landpower Advocate".[4]

A little over a week after the New York Times story ran, NPR Ombudsman, Alicia C. Shepard, wrote in her blog that when the story broke "emails began flying trying to assess the damage and determine how to proceed. NPR waited until Wednesday on Talk of the Nation to first discuss this issue publicly. The Bryant Park Project followed up the next day with two pieces on how the media was ignoring The Times' story."[5] Shepard noted "since February 2003, he has been on NPR 67 times, most often (28 appearances) on All Things Considered (ATC). The latest was March 28, when he gave ATC listeners an assessment of the fifth anniversary of the war ... Only once in December 2006 was Scales' relationship to Colgen mentioned."[5]

Shepherd disagreed with the suggestion of a number of NPR listeners who wanted the media organization to stop doing interviews with Scales. "Rather than toss Scales off the air and lose his practical and scholarly knowledge of the Army, in the future NPR should always be transparent and identify him as a defense consultant with Colgen. NPR's audience can evaluate what Scales says through that lens. NPR should also append a note to each archived Scales' appearances that indicates he is also a defense consultant with Colgen.

What also is needed, and I believe NPR will now begin doing, is a more careful vetting of all experts before they go on air," she wrote.[5] NPR have developed new guidelines for "vetting guests" which state "Ask the guest if he/she has any conflicts of interest. You can modify the question to be more descriptive; any financial, political, personal or other conflicts of interest. In some cases, the appearance of conflict of interest obvious to some, may not be obvious to the guest. For example, has the guest made any trips paid for by an organization having an interest in this story?"

Shepard apparently felt that identifying Scales as a defense consultant with Colgen was sufficient. I assume she felt that it wasn't necessary to identify Colgen as a contractor that benefited directly from Pentagon contracts.

This is from Shepard's post regarding Scales at her ombudsman blog at NPR's website:

"While Scales and Rhame may not have been vetted by NPR, it doesn't appear that either had any glaring business conflicts."

In her post on the debate over use of the word "torture", Shepard lamented the fact that journalists were in a "no-win situation", in that use of the word torture would appear to side with one political faction and avoidance of the word would appear to side with another faction. Obviously from Shepard's perspective journalism has less to do with accuracy and objectivity than observing some notion of neutrality between political factions. However, when it comes to hiring "experts" with business relationships with the Pentagon, her concern about perceptions of neutrality disappear. She not only defends NPR airing the views of Pentagon contractors on the subject of the Iraq war, but insists, contrary to the evidence, that such experts/contractors do not have "glaring business conflicts."

a trial turns out, what's the point of holding a trial? Arguably, they can hold them as POW's for the duration of hostilities, so I'm not sure their mere continued detention is a violation of law. (Although then they would have to be given the Geneva Convention privileges and protections, and also an opportunity to challenge their classification as combatants.) And, if they're going to hold them anyway, that solves the alleged problem of releasing dangerous people.

So what's the point of bringing them to trial? And, in particular, what's the point of setting up these newfangled military commissions for those they are not confident of being able to get convicted in Article III court trials?

By the way, the practice of detaining (in "protective custody" in concentration camps) persons acquitted in normal court was one of the practices of Himmler's SS that were regarded as most outrageous.