Torture...

Wow, the Administration *REALLY* wants to keep its ability to torture.

How does anyone think this Administration still has ANY credibility on the torture issue?

They have told us repeatedly that the U.S. does not engage in torture, but then refuse to support laws enforcing that, while more and more stories come out about extreme practices in the war on terror which look an awful lot like torture to me.

So now, after finally acquiescing to the McCain torture amendment, this article comes out, indicating that Bush issued a “signing statement” with his signing of the bill which makes it clear that he views the new law as one which he, as President, has the authority to waive in the pursuit of the war on terror.

There are so many ways in which this is bad. It makes a mockery of the bill, sends the message to the world that we’re winking and crossing our fingers when we say we don’t torture, and entirely circumvents the intent of the law in the first place.

Second, it means that Bush has still not learned the lesson he needed to learn after the whole wiretapping thing and the whole Jose Padilla thing, that Executive privilege does not extend to dictatorial levels, and that just ignoring legal and Constitutional checks and balances when they get in your way is NOT warranted under any circumstances. No one would agree that, in advance of hurricane Katrina, a good way to save houses under imminent threat was to burn them down, so that the flooding couldn’t hurt them, but that seems to be what we’re doing with our nation: Eroding away anything that makes it strong and great using the argument that such actions are necessary to protect it.

Finally, the phrase “war on terror” is so poorly defined that it has become a blank check, a bogeyman for the President to invoke any time he wants more power. Yes, terrorism is frightening. We have enemies and we do need to protect ourselves against them. But no one, from the President on down, should have the ability to extricate themselves from burdensome checks and balances by simply citing a threat. To allow them to do so is to invite corruption and abuse of the system, if not by THIS President, then by the next, or the one after that, who may cite this precedent as justification for improper actions.

I’ll leave this with one more example. Suppose someone vandalized my car in the driveway. I have a pretty good idea who has done it, but they’ve gone on vacation and I can’t get to them to verify or fix the situation. Now suppose that I decided to clean up my neighborhood by going around and beating up every local teenager, because they belong to the same group that the vandals came from. Suppose I had had disagreements with my next door neighbor before, and on the rumor that he’d gone and bought a gun, broke into his house and burned it down. Suppose some of the people whom I knew or pretty strongly suspected were part of the original vandalizing were found nearby, and instead of calling the police, I grabbed them, tied them up in my basement and tortured them to get information, refusing to let them go or even let anyone know they were there. Do you honestly think that the police would by the “imminent threat” argument that everything I had done that violated laws and people’s rights was justified because of the global “war on vandalism”?

No, they wouldn’t. Regardless of the threat, we have laws and we have rules and we have principles. And as long as we have a President who believes those laws, rules and principles are merely guidelines for him to follow or ignore based on Presidential whim, we are tearing apart the very fabric of that which we would be protecting.

Liam.