Obama Executive Orders Put Politics Over National Security

RUSH: Great pomp and circumstance, a lot of fanfare today at the White House as President Obama signed four executive orders. One of them is a presidential records executive order, the FOIA request. Turns out that my suspicions yesterday were right. Details coming up. He also signed an executive order shutting Club Gitmo in one year. This was not a security decision, by the way. There’s no way this is a security decision. This is the steady deconstruction of the Bush internal security program. If we are attacked again, these moves by Obama today, if he actually does close Club Gitmo, if he actually does it — I’m still not convinced they’re actually going to shut the place down, although he made it sound like it was definite today and they’re going to move these people out, we’re going to put ’em on trial and we’re doing this to show the rest of the world that we’re being faithful to our ideals. But if he closes Gitmo, if he actually does it, if he undergoes the changes, if he puts the changes into place, undoing interrogation techniques, and if he brings these — Jack Murtha said, (paraphrasing) ‘Go ahead and close the place down and bring the prisoners to my district.’

You people in western Pennsylvania in Jack Murtha’s district, you need to know that he has offered the welcome mat for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay to be brought into your neighborhoods. I doubt that he would extend the same invitation to the Marines who served valiantly in Iraq. But, see, this isn’t about Iraq. This is about Obama making political rather than security decisions. I hope this goes okay, I really do, but presidential decisions have consequences. None of the potential consequences are being given weight by him or his supporters in the media. They’re going to have to be held accountable in any future attacks as a result of this. In every news story reporting the closing of Guantanamo Bay, the release of prisoners, the interrogation techniques and so forth, there’s not one bit of analysis, it’s just straight down the line reporting, there’s not one question about it, ‘What does this mean? What is our new policy?’ This isn’t a new policy. These executive orders today are basically the ‘we don’t have a clue’ executive orders. They’re just doing this, a quick political move on day two or three of this historic Obama presidency.

The New York Times story on this today: ‘Obama to Shut Guantanamo and the CIA Prisons,’ the so-called black sites around the world within one year, but the executive orders, reports the New York Times, ‘would leave unresolved complex questions surrounding the closing of the Guantanamo prison, including whether, where and how many of the detainees are to be prosecuted. They could also allow Mr. Obama to reinstate the CIA’s detention and interrogation operations in the future, by presidential order, as some have argued would be appropriate if Osama Bin Laden or another top-level leader of Al Qaeda were captured.’ So they want it both ways. That’s why I say, this is a political decision today. The announcing of the closing of Club Gitmo simply a political decision, not security, because they’ve left open to themselves all the options Bush used if they capture the right people or if there is another attack.

So the hardcore left supporters of Obama who have probably the number of brain cells you’d find in your average amoeba who have no ability to engage in nuance or depth whatsoever will be totally satisfied by this, when in fact Obama has left the door open for warrantless wiretap searches; he has left the door open for continued CIA interrogation techniques he’s supposedly ending today; he has left the door open for keeping Gitmo open, should we capture the right people, and this is something not being reported. There is no questioning of this, there’s no suspicion, there’s no analysis of it whatsoever. They’re just happily reporting what Obama is doing, and acting like it’s just wonderful.

The thing that I mentioned yesterday about the presidential records: ‘Former presidents would face limits in their ability to block the release of sensitive records of their time in the White House, under an executive order issued by President Barack Obama. Former presidents may ask to have certain documents kept private, but they no longer may compel the National Archives to do so.’ Now, theoretically this means that the Clintons would have to give it all up. Hillary and Bill used the National Archives as the excuse during the campaign for not releasing the list of donors to the Library and Massage Parlor in Little Rock and the Clinton Foundation, but make no mistake, ‘The executive order also makes clear that neither former vice presidents nor relatives of former presidents who have died have authority to keep records private. Obama’s action on Wednesday — his first full day in office — overturned an earlier order issued by George W. Bush that prompted a federal lawsuit. … Scott Nelson, a Public Citizen lawyer who led the challenge to Bush’s order, said researchers should find it easier to gain access to records under the new order. ‘It’s a great signal to send on the president’s first day in office,’ Nelson said.’ This only applies to former presidents, and he’s not a former president.
Also the attorney general is deeply involved in this. You have to go through the attorney general who is likely to be Eric ‘Marc Rich’ Holder, and in that event as for the Clinton records at the Library and Massage Parlor, would Eric Holder allow damaging records out as the attorney general? So what we have here is the safe door has been opened and unlocked, and whatever anybody wants about Bush and Cheney from their eight years is now free to make a request for it and see how far they can go. ‘A request will be evaluated by the archivist, the White House counsel and the attorney general, under Obama’s order. They can disregard the former president’s wishes and allow for the release of the material, the order says. Tom Blanton, director of the open-government advocate National Security Archive, said the order applies to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s records.’ No mention here whether it applies to Algore’s records. ‘Cheney has been embroiled in a lawsuit over which of his records have to be handed over to the National Archives.’ Anyway, this is another political move.

All of these executive orders are purely political including Guantanamo Bay and the relocation and the trial of prisoners and terrorists who are being housed down there. Nothing to do with the security of the United States, purely, purely political. Now, some of you might be saying, ‘But, Rush, but, Rush, what’s wrong with all this openness? We ought to be able to find out what was going on in the administration, all of them.’ Look, folks, I’m all for transparency, as Obama says — oh, and they’ve already broken the rules on no lobbyists in his administration. Wait ’til you hear this. We have our first tax cheat, or soon will be, a historic first. First tax cheat as Treasury secretary in a historic administration. Here’s the reason. Washington, DC, and our government, and it was set up this way, and I realize that some of you listening might be hearing this for the first time given the state of public education in America today, but the three branches of government — the judicial, the executive, and the legislative — legislative is Congress; judicial is the courts; and the executive is the president. Those three branches are, as they are designed to be, constantly at war with each other over power.

Congress wants to have as much power as it can get, the president wants to have as much power as he can get, and the courts, as you all know, are usurping power like crazy by actually legislating laws from the bench under the guise of judicial decisions on various cases. So it is up to the president to protect the institution and the power of the executive, for all time, not just his administration, but on down the road. Bush closed access, he tightened access. As soon as he assumed office he tightened access to the records of past presidents. And a lot of people got mad, ‘What do you mean, we want to find out what went on there with Clinton.’ Bush was saying, ‘This is the executive branch and I’m here to defend it.’ The way civics is taught, everybody gets along, it’s hunky-dory, it’s one big happy family, and it’s not the way it is. These jockeying positions for power happen all the time. It’s by design. This government was designed to plod along and move slowly and be stopped by internecine fights at every corner.

The founders did not trust government; they did not trust a Big Government. They want it roadblocked every chance it got, except in the area of national security and national defense. But when it came to writing laws, which are the impositions on individual freedom they wanted that to be a bottleneck. That’s why the House was designed as it is and the Senate was designed as it is, different lengths of service, far more many members in the House of Representatives, and, of course, the president sitting up there in the White House on his own. Now, he’s got a lot of power, but the idea here is that all presidents have tried to get as much as they can, and that’s standard operating procedure. So this move by Obama under the guise of openness is another political move that has basically a road map drawn for John Conyers and others who want to bring the president and the vice president, Bush and Cheney, up on war crimes charges and trials, while Obama makes it look like he’s got nothing to do with it. So we have a guy who’s appearing and wants to be thought of as running a centrist government, but he’s opening the doors, as he can, for all the left-wing hacks that got him elected and that exist in the Congress, the Senate and the House.