| If Bush, as Commander-In-Chief, has the right to authorize the use of torture, why didn't Saddam Hussein have the right to authorize the use of torture? |
| Lawyers inside the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department have apparantly advised senior members of the White House (perhaps including the President, he can't remember...) that the Comander-In-Chief has the right to ignore international treaties (including the Geneva Convention) and US laws that forbid the torture of prisoners. But isn't the last excuse for the war in Iraq (since no WMDs existed) that Hussein tortured and murdered his own citizens in his prisons? Why is it OK for Bush, but not OK for Hussein?
What a revelation to learn that the Justice Department lawyer who wrote the infamous memo in effect defending torture is now a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judge. It tells you all you need to know about the sort of conservative to whom George W. Bush is turning in his attempt to pack the federal courts. On Sunday [6/13/04], the Washington Post published on its website an internal White House memo from Aug. 1, 2002, signed by then-Assistant Atty. Gen. Jay S. Bybee, which argued darkly that torturing Al Qaeda captives "may be justified" and that international laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" conducted under President Bush. The memo then continued for 50 pages to make the case for the use of torture. Bybee's generous standard should bring comfort to the totalitarian governments that find the brutal treatment of prisoners a handy tool in retaining power or fighting wars. Even Saddam Hussein, who always faced the threat of assassination and terrorism from foreign and domestic rivals, can now offer in his defense Bybee's memo that his actions were justifiable, on the grounds of "necessity or self-defense." When confronted by the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee with the content of Bybee's torture defense, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft responded that the memo did not guide the administration. Yet, the Bybee memo was clearly the basis for the working group report on detainee interrogations presented to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld a year later. And if Bybee's work was rejected as reprehensible, why was he rewarded -- with Ashcroft's deepest blessings -- with a lifetime appointment on the judicial bench only one level below the Supreme Court? Source: "Tout torture, get promoted - Defending cruelty can be a career booster in Bush's administration" by Robert Scheer Creators Syndicate 06.15.04 |
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