Lots of butter, but easy on the salt, please'Having considered the matter, the government adheres to its previously articulated position." With these words, Acting Assistant Attorney General Michael Hertz ended a dream.
Never mind. When an article starts out like that it's time for the Dramamine, not the popcorn.
The dream that Barack Obama's presidency would inaugurate a transcendent world order on a new moral plane.
See, what this tells you is that the editors of The Independent don't know a whole lot about Illinois politics.
"Governor, there's some Brit a****** out here sayin' he wants a transcendent world something or other."
"Huh? Tell that f*** Transvestite World's on the South Side. Ask for Butch."
"I don't think that's it, Governor. I wrote it down. He wants a 'transcendent world order on a new moral plane.'"
"For nothing? F*** him. I'll give the world to the f****** Martians before I give this f*** a new world order and I don't get anything!"
Late on Friday Mr Hertz told the Washington district court that the Obama administration maintained President Bush's view that prisoners held at Bagram air base in Afghanistan could not challenge their detention in US courts. For the cynics, this is "a previously articulated position you can believe in".
This newspaper was not so naive
( with a lead in like that you know this next part's going to be weird)
as to imagine that President Obama would immediately conform to the most scrupulous interpretation of US and international law.
Which is?
We are pleased that he has ordered the closure within a year of Guantanamo Bay, halted military trials and restricted CIA interrogators to Army Field Manual techniques. But the refusal to grant legal rights to detainees at Bagram is disappointing.
Hmm. I'm guessing The Independent still isn't ready to get on the Palin 2012 bandwagon.
The US Supreme Court ruling in 2004 that prisoners in Guantanamo had the right to take their cases to US courts ended the anomalous status of the prison camp in Cuba. President Bush's attempt to create a legal limbo outside the American and international legal systems had failed. But he continued to try to deny legal rights to prisoners not just in Guantanamo but in Iraq and Bagram, too.
The way I'd put that is: he continued to try to win the war.
Mr Obama's closure of Guantanamo therefore smacks more of fulfilling a symbolic pledge than following it through.
"Ahmed, we're gonna hook your 'nads up to this car battery, but only for symbolic reasons."
"Is it too late for me to vote Repubican?"
Indeed, Elena Kagan, Mr Obama's nominee for Solicitor General, said during her confirmation hearing that someone suspected of helping to finance al-Qa'ida should be subject to battlefield law -- indefinite detention without trial -- even if captured in the Philippines, say, rather than a battle zone.
Nor is this the first disappointment of Obama's presidency.
Even I have to point out he's only been in office 30 days.
Earlier this month, a government lawyer stuck to the Bush line in a case brought by Binyam Mohamed, the British resident expected home from Guantanamo tomorrow.
When he will no doubt resume a Gandhi-like life of non-violence.
When the case resumed after President Obama's inauguration, the judge asked the Justice Department's lawyer if "anything material" had happened to change that view. "No, your Honour," came the reply. The position he continued to take, he said, had been "thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration".
Which doesn't mean that there's not plenty of room under the bus for this DOJ guy.
What is more, Leon Panetta, Mr Obama's nominee as CIA director, charged with ending the use of torture techniques such as waterboarding by US agents, said that the agency is likely to continue to transfer detainees to third countries. It would rely on the same assurances of good treatment on which the Bush administration depended.
Hey, if you can't trust Hosni Mubarak, who can you trust?