Waking From a Bad Dream

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, January 6, 2009

It has been like a national nightmare: We are attacked by terrorists and our leaders respond not with courage and a call to our higher natures, but by spreading fear -- and turning us into a regime of torturers. Rather than celebrate our Constitution and its enduring values, they use the levers of government to subvert it.

Now the nightmare appears to be almost over.

By choosing two vocal opponents of torture for two key positions -- Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency -- President-elect Barack Obama has indicated that he intends to make the cleanest possible break from Bush administration precedents, end torture and return to traditional interpretations of the Constitution.

Greg Gordon writes for McClatchy Newspapers: "In filling four senior Justice Department positions Monday, President-elect Barack Obama signaled that he intends to roll back Bush administration counterterrorism policies authorizing harsh interrogation techniques, warrantless spying and indefinite detentions of terrorism suspects.

"The most startling shift was Obama's pick of Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen to take charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, the unit that's churned out the legal opinions that provided a foundation for expanding President George W. Bush's national security powers.

(More here.)