"You've got state secrets, targeted killings, indefinite detention, renditions, the opposition to extending the right of habeas corpus to prisoners at Bagram [in Afghanistan]. And although it is slightly different, Obama has been as aggressive as President Bush in defending prerogatives about who he has to inform in Congress for executive covert action," - former CIA director Michael Hayden, celebrating Obama's embrace of the unchecked executive power he once promised to restrain. He does not mention a vital difference: Obama's ending of the active torture regime of his predecessor.

Ben Wizner puts it more succinctly:

"It can fairly be said that the Bush administration made torture the law of the land and the Obama administration is making impunity for torture the law of the land."

And the war machine moves on, constrained by no one.

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