Obama endorses Bush Policy

[dilloduck]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Five years into his presidency, Barack Obama presides over a national security apparatus that in many ways still resembles the one left behind by President George W. Bush. Drones are killing terrorism suspects, the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, holds "enemy combatants" and the government secretly collects telephone records of millions of Americans.

This from a president who in 2008 ran as the anti-Bush candidate who would get the U.S. out of Iraq, put an end to torture and redefine U.S. policies abroad.

But even as he has ended the war in Iraq, changed interrogation standards and sought to build foreign alliances, the former constitutional law professor also has disappointed some allies by embracing, and in some cases expanding, the counterterrorism policies that caused Bush to run afoul of civil libertarians.

Over the past two days, news accounts have revealed that the government has collected millions of Americans' phone records in the name of national security and has also conducted an Internet surveillance program that tracks people's movements and contacts that the Obama administration says is aimed exclusively at non-citizens outside the U.S. Both programs rely on the Bush-era Patriot Act, which Congress has since twice reauthorized with Obama's support.

Obama embracing some Bush-era anti-terror policies