You know, we did what we could to prohibit torture,

including working to legislate that change.

For Barack Obama, who's coming into office,

the disruption of taking on a prosecution of US officials

would have been a consuming thing for him to do.

Welcome to Deconstructed, I'm Mehdi Hassan.

Barack Obama was one of the most polarizing presidents

of the modern era, and his foreign policy was particularly polarizing.

To liberals the world over, he was like Neo from the Matrix.

He was the one, the Messiah, who came to fix the world order

after the chaos and crimes that came before him,

who we claim America from the Bush machine.

Obama even won a Nobel Peace Prize in his first year in office,

as I would say, simply for not being George W. Bush.

Clear-eyed, we can understand that there will be war

and still strive for peace.

We can do that, for that is the story of human progress.

To his right-wing critics, though,

Obama was a weak, feckless leader who led from behind

and went on apology tours while failing to crack down

on radical Islamic terrorism or quote unquote illegal immigrants.

Thousands of Americans would be alive today

...