Last modified: Wed Aug 10 23:15:06 EDT 2005
Remember when Clinton told the grand jury investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is"? The Bush administration is getting to be just as definition-challenged, but it's not about a blow job - it's about presidential power and the war in Iraq.
Today's New York Times article "Bush Didn't Order Any Breach of Torture Laws, Ashcroft Says" puts it this way:
One of the recently published memorandums, dated March 6, 2003, provides elaborate and tightly constructed definitions of torture in an effort to to allow interrogators to avoid being charged with that offense. For example, if an interrogator "knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent even though the defendant did not act in good faith," the report said. "Instead, a defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within his control."
When asked by the Judiciary Committee to provide other memos, Ashcroft stonewalled, stating that the memos amounted to confidential legal advice given to the president and did not have to be shared with Congress.
Larry Craig, a Republican senator from Idaho, told Ashcroft, "I hope that in the end Saddam Hussein will not have taken away from us something that our Constitution, in large part, granted us, and that we have it taken away in the name of safety and security."
Senator Craig, I couldn't agree more.
The New York Times, picking up on a story that broke in the Wall Street Journal, reports that a team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security.
In other words: the rule of law does not apply to the President if he is acting to protect national security.
I don't agree with everything that Ms. Sontag writes in this article, but overall I find it pulls together a lot of thoughts I've had about the abuse scandal in particular and, more broadly, the entire "war on terror."
I am deeply troubled by the Bush administration's bald assertion that this war is somehow different from anything that the U.S. has ever faced before, and so we can casually discard all the rules. They have invented a new category of prisoner - the "unlawful combatant" - to whom seemingly no rules whatsoever apply. They aren't subject to the international treaties, such as the Geneva Convention, nor are they governed by the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore, the administration can declare anyone it chooses to be an unlawful combatant, no matter where they are seized or what they are alleged to have done. If this isn't totalitarian behavior, I don't know what is.
I'm also repelled by the language the administration uses. Here are some examples:
Q: Do you want bin Laden dead?
THE PRESIDENT: I want justice. There's an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, "Wanted: Dead or Alive."
Bush's remarks at the Pentagon, September 17, 2001
The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.
Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, September 20, 2001
To date, we've arrested or otherwise dealt with many key commanders of al Qaeda. [...] All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way -- they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.
2003 State of the Union address, January 28, 2003
I find it hard to even think about this, let alone write about it.
This is turning into one of the ugliest, most divisive issues I've ever seen. Apparently some significant percentage of the U.S. public doesn't believe this is a big deal. "No worse than fraternity hazing" is a phrase I've heard more than once. You have bozos like Senator James M. Inhofe (R-OK) saying things like:
I -- well, first of all, I regret I wasn't here on Friday. I was unable to be here. But maybe it's better that I wasn't, because as I watched the -- this outrage, this outrage everyone seems to have about the treatment of these prisoners, I was, I have to say -- and I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment. The idea that these prisoners -- you know, they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cell block 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. And here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.In other words, if they've been arrested, then they must be pond scum, so who cares how we treat them?
Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing, Tuesday, May 11, 2004
I find that sickening.
I'm convinced this will go down in history as a classic piece of bureaucratic writing, right up there with the Pentagon Papers. It's written in that mind-numbing style, replete with footnotes, that is so typical of government reports, and yet the subject matter is riveting.
If the link above dies, refer to
this local copy.