Obama risks wrath of his liberal base

[IndianaGreen]

Obama risks wrath of his liberal base

Decision to revive military trials for terror suspects welcomed by Republicans – and lambasted by human rights activists

By David Usborne, US editor

Saturday, 16 May 2009

(Obama's) statement yesterday reflected that balance: "This is the best way to protect our country, while upholding our deeply held values," he said. And while acknowledging that he had "objected strongly" to the Bush approach, he insisted that military tribunals "are appropriate for trying enemies who violate the laws of war".

There was support for the shift from a key moderate Republican, Senator Lindsey Graham. "I continue to believe it is in our own national security interests to separate ourselves from the past problems of Guantanamo," he said, while adding: "I agree with the President and our military commanders that now is the time to start over and strengthen our detention policies. I applaud the President's actions today." But liberals will point unhappily to an emerging pattern of Mr Obama retreating from his initial instinct to throw Bush anti-terror policies overboard.

He performed a similarly perilous policy pirouette earlier this week when he sought to block attempts to release a new batch of photographs of prisoner abuse by members of the US military, saying that to do so would endanger US soldiers serving abroad. Previously, the White House had indicated that it would not intervene after a court ordered the release of the photographs.

It will hardly help him, however, that at least one of the photographs in question has now leaked. The SBS television channel in Australia revealed that in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal two years ago, it had acquired other photographs that have not yet been widely seen.

The Obama White House is increasingly finding itself and its allies embroiled in controversies to do with the treatment of prisoners from George Bush's War on Terror. On Thursday, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House, took steps to defend herself against allegations that she knew for years that the US was waterboarding detainees, saying the CIA had lied to her about it.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obama-risks-wrath-of-his-liberal-base-1685722.html