The only question that remains is whether Obama himself will have any last-minute qualms about turning his back on his own principles."Obama's Bagram Fly-In: What He Didn't Visit" (Harry Shearer):
We should know in a matter of days, as the White House is expected to announce shortly whether the highest-profile terror suspects, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, will be tried in federal court or by military commissions.
So I guess this war is enough like the Iraq War that President Obama, like his predecessor, can only visit the troops at night, in secret. And the whiff of triumphalism is familiar, too: "we never quit". Really? Lebanon 1984 didn't happen? Vietnam came out differently than we remember?Still, the most jarring part of the Obama fly-in to Bagram was the part of the base he (apparently) didn't visit: the secret prison we've been running there for years. It's Gitmo on steroids.
Try here, here, here, here, here, here and here for the info on that "other" Bagram.
The Obama some of us want to believe still exists would have at least acknowledged the unpleasant truth. The Obama who does exist just gave the troops a boilerplate pep talk, "never quit" and all, and flew into the dawn.
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