Back in April of 2008, I wrote a post about the Bush Cabinet creating the torture policy for the United States, and about how the Office of Legal Counsel authorized the use of torture on enemy combatants. I also talked about the John Yoo memo that said the Fourth Amendment did not apply to actions of the US military within the United States. This memo was not released by the Bush administration, it was only referenced in a footnote of another memo.

This week the Obama administration released a handful of these “secret memos,” over many objections by various government agencies. Glenn Greenwald over at Salon dissects the whole mess very well, and you can get copies of the memos from his links.

It’s amazing how suddenly there’s all this talk in the press about the radical measures the Bush administration took in order to “win’ the “war on terror.” Our rights! Our rights! Oh my god! What hath they done?

I’m reminded how little notice this got in the mainstream press at the time. Meanwhile, the liberal blogs were screaming about how rights given to us by the Constitution were actually being TAKEN AWAY. You’d think this would have gotten a little more attention WHILE it was happening. But no, we were just Bush haters who wanted the US to wave the white flag of surrender in the war on terror.

While I’m unhappy that President Obama seems to want to “stay the course” as it were with many aspects of Bush’s policies on Iraq and Afghanistan and so-called “enemy combatants,” I’m encouraged that he is finally allowing some of the more outrageous DOJ/Office of Legal Cousel opinion pieces to see the light of day.

Not that I think most people are paying attention.