ABSTRACT
American people have been encouraged to carry on with private lives focused on work, family, entertainment, and mass consumerism while U.S. military masters conduct widely unpopular wars of occupation without meaningful democratic consultation. As a campaigner, Obama may have played to the Democratic Parties progressive base by speaking eloquently of his own commitment to restoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by rolling back the repressive policies of the Bush administration. In mid-April 2009, the Obama Justice Department expressed its determination to shield direct Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) torturers from prosecution, even after it won accolades from liberal commentators for releasing past White House memorandums outlining the Bush administration's extreme torture practices. In late April 2009, Obama vetoed CIA director Leon Panetta's recommendation to set up an independent truth commission to investigate the Bush II administration's criminal torture practices.
