Overturning Dubya: Obama to reverse Bush national security policies

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Following up on my Bush-Obama-Gitmo post from last night, it looks like Obama will indeed reverse many of Bush's more egregious moves:

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to move swiftly to reverse executive orders regarding torture of terror suspects, the military prison at Guantanamo Bay and other controversial security policies, sources close to his transition said, in dramatic gestures aimed at reversing President Bush’s accumulation of executive power.

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) said he's been informed that President Obama will support his proposed legislation to make public some opinions from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which issued some of the Bush Administration's most sweeping claims of executive power. Obama also has promised to limit President Bush's practice of using "signing statements" to amend legislation.

"Every day we get indications that they're serious about reversing the abuses of the Constitution," Feingold, a harsh Bush critic, told Politico. Feingold said he thinks Obama is likely to issue executive orders rapidly reversing Bush policies, and others have indicated that those will likely cover the interrogation and detention of terror suspects, and keeping the records of past presidents secret.

For America, then, the start of a long road back to respectability and a renewed moral standing in the world, a start coming in just a matter of days, and not a moment too soon.