Obama's Policy on torture Term Paper

This paper discusses how on January 22, 2009, two days after his inauguration, President Obama overruled the advice of his new administration and signed a series of executive orders that repudiated abuses carried out under the Bush administration. It also looks at how what seemed to be at first sight a bold new policy on torture, civil liberties, state secrets and expanded powers of the executive branch, reversing the Bush administration's counter-terrorism policies, was not followed by executive application and soon appeared to be only theoretical and ephemeral. The Obama administration's national security policies differ in substance from those of the Bush administration's second term mostly at the margins.