The names may have changed, but the U.S. government is still serving up the same great neocon policies that kept the country safe for the last seven years. The New York Times says that “for all the shifting words, Mr. Obama has left the bulk of Mr. Bush’s national security architecture intact so far.” The Times offers just a few of the cosmetic changes made by this administration, all of which leave in place the same fundamental approach to fighting terrorism employed by the Bush administration. There’s the new name for the war on terror (Overseas Contingency Operations) and the new name for terrorist attacks (man-caused disasters). There are others the paper doesn’t include. Take for example the executive order closing down the CIA’s overseas “black sites.” The CIA was granted an exemption to maintain “temporary holding facilities.” That is, of course, precisely what the black sites were. A rose by any other name . . .
