Friday 26th of April 2024
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the legacy .....

the legacy .....

Barack Obama will move swiftly to unpick many of what he sees as the most egregious acts of the Bush administration when he enters the White House in January, including restrictions on stem cell research and moves to allow oil drilling in wilderness areas, a leading member of his transition team said yesterday. 

John Podesta, a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton whom Obama has put in joint charge of his transition process, indicated the incoming president would use extraordinary powers to force through rapid change.

"There's a lot the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action, and I think we'll see the president do that," Podesta said. Podesta singled out restrictions applied by George Bush, in 2001, on federal funding of stem cell research, as well as recent moves by the White House to dilute environmental protections against oil drilling, as two areas in which quick action may be taken.

"You see the Bush administration, even today, is moving aggressively to do things that are probably not in the interest of the country," he said.

Obama Will Move To Veto Bush Laws 

meanwhile …..

The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials. 

These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the officials said.

The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States. In 2006, for example, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected militants’ compound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan, according to a former top official of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Officials watched the entire mission — captured by the video camera of a remotely piloted Predator aircraft — in real time in the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center at the agency’s headquarters in Virginia 7,000 miles away. 

Some of the military missions have been conducted in close coordination with the CIA, according to senior American officials, who said that in others, like the Special Operations raid in Syria on Oct. 26 of this year, the military commandos acted in support of CIA-directed operations.  

Secret Order Lets US Raid Al Qaeda In Many Countries

Bush digging, Obama filling...

Stephanie Cutter, a spokeswoman for the Obama transition team, released a statement calling the meeting "productive and friendly".

"They had a broad discussion about the importance of working together throughout the transition of government in light of the nation's many critical economic and security challenges," Cutter said. "President-elect Obama thanked President Bush for his commitment to a smooth transition, and for his and first lady Laura Bush's gracious hospitality in welcoming the Obamas to the White House."

Bush first invited Obama to meet on Wednesday, calling the election of the first black US president a "triumph of the American story" and displaying genuine warmth that pleasantly surprised some Democrats.

The comity between the incoming and outgoing chief executives this year is a marked departure from the acrimony of December 2000, when Bill Clinton made way for Bush after the election was decided by the supreme court's halting of a disputed recount.

Yet Bush and Obama have more than enough reason to be wary of one another during their talks today. Bush's aides are hastily finishing up a series of controversial regulations expected to be pushed through before he leaves office, and the Obama transition team is working equally hard to unwind Bush-era rules curtailing environmental protections and medical research, among other government policies.

read more at the Guardian and the NYT and see toon at top...

ditching discredited Bush administration policies

From The Guardian

 President Barack Obama yesterday devoted his first full day in office to ditching one discredited Bush administration policy after another - proposing the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison and offering a new relationship to Iran.

Sitting behind the desk at the Oval Office at 8.35am after a late night of inauguration balls, he set about trying to live up to the daunting expectations for his presidency both at home and abroad.

He gathered his military commanders to set new missions for Iraq and Afghanistan, and met his economics team to discuss a proposed $800bn spending package to combat recession. He also phoned world leaders to emphasise that a new president is in charge, with a completely different agenda and world outlook.

Although Obama's team is reluctant to be compared with Franklin Roosevelt's famous 100 days that brought in the New Deal - the measurement for all subsequent presidencies - it wants his 100 days to be just as historically significant.

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see toon at top... and read more at The Guardian