Let the Real Obama Shine Through!

Unless, of course . . . .

While I agree that if Obama is going to lead a truly historic reformation of Washington, he will have to challnege the conventional wisdom more forcefully, I completely disagree about Podesta.

His Center for American Progress has been churning out great work for the last several years, the first serious attempt to directly counter all the Republican-funded foundations like Heritage and AEI. Podesta himself is a great asset to Obama, an insider but a pretty regular guy from Illinois. When I worked in DC, Podesta was the guy in the White House that we would go to with policy ideas that went against the conventional wisdom because we knew, as the CAP demonstrates, he's a strategic thinker with an eye toward long term American Progress.

If anything, Geithner and Daschle are Obama's fault. I love the guy and wish him well, but I think that he really wanted them in those spots and was willing to bend his own rules to get them. See also Bill Lynn.

In retrospect, I wish Geithner had been the one to go down and not Daschle, but like grade school, the first offender rarely gets the punishment. I actually think that the fact that Daschle's name was pulled is a sign that Obama is serious about reform. Daschle has been called Obama's mentor in a few stories, and I think he could have been confirmed, but the idea of fighting for a limo riding, high priced (almost a) lobbyist was just too much.

From the current Guardian:

"Lieutenant-Colonel Yvonne Bradley, an American military lawyer, will step through the grand entrance of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London tomorrow and demand the release of her client - a British resident who claims he was repeatedly tortured at the behest of US intelligence officials - from Guantánamo Bay. Bradley will also request the disclosure of 42 secret documents that allegedly chronicle not only how Binyam Mohamed was tortured, but may also corroborate claims that Britain was complicit in his treatment.

But first, Bradley, a US military attorney for 20 years, will reveal that Mohamed, 31, is dying in his Guantánamo cell and that conditions inside the Cuban prison camp have deteriorated badly since Barack Obama took office. Fifty of its 260 detainees are on hunger strike and, say witnesses, are being strapped to chairs and force-fed, with those who resist being beaten. At least 20 are described as being so unhealthy they are on a "critical list", according to Bradley.

Mohamed, who is suffering dramatic weight loss after a month-long hunger strike, has told Bradley, 45, that he is "very scared" of being attacked by guards, after witnessing a savage beating for a detainee who refused to be strapped down and have a feeding tube forced into his mouth. It is the first account Bradley has personally received of a detainee being physically assaulted in Guantánamo.

Bradley recently met Mohamed in Camp Delta's sparse visiting room and was shaken by his account of the state of affairs inside the notorious prison.

She said: "At least 50 people are on hunger strike, with 20 on the critical list, according to Binyam. The JTF [the Joint Task Force running Guantánamo] are not commenting because they do not want the public to know what is going on.

"Binyam has witnessed people being forcibly extracted from their cell. Swat teams in police gear come in and take the person out; if they resist, they are force-fed and then beaten. Binyam has seen this and has not witnessed this before. Guantánamo Bay is in the grip of a mass hunger strike and the numbers are growing; things are worsening.

"It is so bad that there are not enough chairs to strap them down and force-feed them for a two- or three-hour period to digest food through a feeding tube. Because there are not enough chairs the guards are having to force-feed them in shifts. After Binyam saw a nearby inmate being beaten it scared him and he decided he was not going to resist. He thought, 'I don't want to be beat, injured or killed.' Given his health situation, one good blow could be fatal," said Bradley.

"Binyam is continuing to lose weight and he is going to get worse. He has been told he is about to be released, but psychologically and physically he is declining."

It is conceivable that Mohamed himself may shortly return to London, heralding yet another political embarrassment for Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who already faces a tumultuous week over claims that he was keen to suppress evidence of torture.

On Tuesday, the unprecedented dispute between Miliband and the judiciary is set to reignite when High Court judges Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones decide whether to reopen the case which Mohamed believes substantiates his torture claims.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, a little-publicised court case into the treatment of Mohamed will open. American civil liberties lawyers are hoping to shine a light on the defence firm that allegedly carried out the practice of "rendition" on behalf of the CIA. Jeppesen Dataplan, a Boeing subsidiary, helped to arrange rendition flights for several terror suspects, including Mohamed, to nations where they claim they were tortured.

The case was originally dismissed after the Bush administration asserted "state secrets privilege", indicating that it would endanger national security - the same argument used by Miliband. However, Obama has repeatedly stressed his willingness to be less secretive than his predecessor and a similar decision would lead to claims that the current administration is bent on suppressing evidence of torture.

Closer to home, the Observer has found evidence suggesting a broader unwillingness by Britain to confront the US over its war on terror programme. The Attorney General says it is "actively considering" possible criminal wrongdoings against MI5 and the CIA, but sources claim the government's senior lawyer has failed, after almost four months of looking into the issue, to request material from the US that may substantiate allegations of MI5 complicity in Mohamed's torture.

Suspicion is also growing that some sections of the US intelligence community would prefer Binyam did die inside Guantánamo. Silenced forever, only the sparse language of his diary would be left to recount his torture claims and interviewees with an MI5 officer, known only as Witness B. Such a scenario would also deny Mohamed the chance to personally sue the US, and possibly British authorities, over his treatment.

But if Mohamed survives to come back to London, his experiences of the past six years promise a harrowing journey through the dark underbelly of the war on terror. For Miliband, the questions concerning Britain's role may have only just begun."

Yes, but will AIPAC approve? Watch out now.

Obama got elected because some people thought that he was not the establishment choice. Notorious radicals Ben Nelson and Claire Mccaskill never thought Obama
was anti-establishment. So far, looks like they were right.

Let's stop kidding ourselves - if Obama wasn't the establishment's choice, he wouldn't be president.

I have to say that I really continue to be amazed at this notion that Obama was not the establishment choice. He was as much the establishment choice as Hillary was.

He was not viewed by the public as the establishment's choice but that doesn't mean their perception was accurate. If he hadn't been the establishment's choice he wouldn't have gotten the kind of money he got people in insurance, defense, finance, big pharma, and so on. He also would not have received the kind of support he got from a huge number of Washington insiders from the moment he bagan toying with the idea of running.

I hasten to add that it is not necessarily a criticism of Obama that he was actually one of, if not the candidate most favored by the establishment. I point it out because it simply isn't accurate to keep repeating this idea that Obama was an outsider. He wasn't. He was a fresh face and a new voice. He was a star. But he was not an outsider once he was sworn in as a US Senator. He took to the insiders and they to him very quickly and very easily. They promoted him from the start, they assisted him from the beginning and there is almost no one other than establishment/insiders near him (working for/advising him) now that he is President.

"I realized today that the only mistakes made in the first three weeks of the Obama Campaign have been made by the establishment apparatus that took over the transition from the campaign staff."

That's a good point.

But, I also think that this is where you see Obama the people pleaser emerging, going with what the inside crowd wants, rather than the general spirit of his campaign staff--which I do think is somewhat his own, as well.

You have a similar dynamic with Geithner, whom he reportedly likes "personally," and to whom he discovered a personal connection in that his (Obama's) mother took part in some international program that Geithner's parents were also involved in.

So, I think it's a little too easy to displace responsibility onto the insiders. At the end of the day, Obama decides which insiders are going to align with his agenda.

I've never bought his notion that "I am the change" and therefore the people he picked didn't matter that much. That's completely nonsensical hedging, something you tell people you think are stupid.