{"id":4007,"date":"2008-07-01T01:02:11","date_gmt":"2008-07-01T00:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=4007"},"modified":"2008-07-01T01:02:11","modified_gmt":"2008-07-01T00:02:11","slug":"pretending-that-bush-is-not-a-tyrant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/pretending-that-bush-is-not-a-tyrant\/","title":{"rendered":"Pretending That Bush is Not a Tyrant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Consortium News<\/a>\u00a0| All over the world down through history, political leaders who have engaged in torture and other grotesque crimes of state have justified their actions as necessary to protect their governments or their people or themselves.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was true when England\u2019s King Edward I had William Wallace \u2014 \u201cBraveheart\u201d \u2014 drawn and quartered in 1305 for resisting the crown\u2019s rule in Scotland, and a gruesome death was what King George III foresaw for America\u2019s Founding Fathers in 1776 when they stood up to his abuses in the Colonies.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kings and tyrants often inflicted special pain on people they viewed as challenging their authority and \u2014 at such times \u2014 they wiped away the rules of justice. But the United States was supposed to be different.<\/p>\n

Indeed, reaction to tyrannical monarchs was what compelled the Founders to establish a government of laws, not men, based on \u201cunalienable rights\u201d for all mankind, including protection against arbitrary detention and prohibition of \u201ccruel and unusual punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which is why it was stunning to watch the June 26 hearing before the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution as two representatives of George W. Bush\u2019s presidency responded with disdain when pressed on the administration\u2019s extraordinary vision of an all-powerful Executive operating without legal limits.<\/p>\n

While Vice President Dick Cheney\u2019s chief of staff David Addington treated the committee Democrats with haughty contempt, former State Department lawyer John Yoo expressed the ultimate arrogance of power with his muddled responses and evasions of direct questions.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The soft-spoken Yoo, who authored some of the key legal opinions justifying the abuse of detainees, wouldn\u2019t even give a clear answer to the simple question of what atrocity might be beyond President Bush\u2019s power to inflict.<\/p>\n

Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, cited a news report quoting an ambiguous response from Yoo, who is now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, about whether the President could torture the child of a \u201cwar on terror\u201d suspect to induce the suspect to talk.<\/p>\n

The Judiciary Committee chairman asked: \u201cIs there anything, Professor Yoo, the President cannot order to be done to a suspect if he believes it\u2019s necessary for national defense?\u201d<\/p>\n

When Yoo dissembled, Conyers posed the question more pointedly: \u201cCould the President order a suspect buried alive?\u201d<\/p>\n

Yoo continued to fence with the congressman, avoiding a direct answer.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I ever gave advice that the President could bury somebody alive,\u201d Yoo said, adding he believed that \u201cno American President would ever have to order that or feel it necessary to order that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pointedly, however, Yoo avoided a direct response to the question of whether he believed the President had the authority to do it.<\/p>\n

Pulling Fingernails<\/strong><\/p>\n

Later in the hearing, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tennessee, returned to the administration\u2019s legal theories that Bush holds \u201cplenary\u201d \u2014 or unlimited \u2014 power at a time of war and that the President\u2019s motivation, i.e. protecting the country, justifies taking extreme actions.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, if I want to take somebody\u2019s fingernails out if I think it\u2019s for the good of the country, that\u2019s not torture?\u201d Cohen asked. \u201cIf I want to cut someone\u2019s appendage off, it\u2019s okay as long as I think it\u2019s important for the country? \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cIs there anything you think the President cannot order in terms of interrogation of these prisoners in a state of war?\u201d<\/p>\n

Again, dodging a direct answer, Yoo responded that those examples \u201care not addressed in these memos. \u2026 I would say there are things I don\u2019t think any American President would order in order to protect the national security and one of those things is the torture of detainees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

At this point, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, subcommittee chairman, interrupted:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the second time today \u2026 that you\u2019ve said that you don\u2019t believe an American President would<\/em> order certain heinous acts. Would you answer the question, not would<\/em> he order it, but could<\/em> he order it under the law in your opinion?\u201d<\/p>\n

Yoo responded, \u201cIt\u2019s not fair to ask that question without any kind of facts,\u201d prompting Nadler to rephrase the question again:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing conceivable to which you could answer \u2018no\u2019 that an American President could not order this without knowing facts and context?\u201d<\/p>\n

Yoo: \u201cI can\u2019t agree with that because you are trying to put words in my mouth attempting to get me to answer some broad question covering all circumstances and I can\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Though refusing to answer, Yoo reaffirmed \u2014 through his circumlocution \u2014 what has been a central tenet of Bush\u2019s view of presidential power, that there are no limits to his power for the duration of the \u201cwar on terror,\u201d even though it is a vague conflict that has no definable end and that is fought on a global battlefield including U.S. territory.<\/p>\n

In other words, it is the opinion of the right-wing lawyers who have constructed this legal theory that Bush truly can do whatever he wants to whomever he wants anywhere in the world as long as he couches his actions under his Commander-in-Chief authority.<\/p>\n

And when it comes to torture, other word games come into play, such as categorizing \u201cwaterboarding,\u201d a form of simulated drowning that has been regarded as torture for centuries, as something other than torture. Reality is all in the eye of the all-powerful President.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Though this right-wing concept of unlimited presidential power appeals to some Americans who consider their personal safety more important than the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, it is so radical a break with American traditions that even its chief advocates, such as Yoo and Addington, duck and weave when the questions are presented directly.<\/p>\n

Election 2008 <\/strong><\/p>\n

This theory of an all-powerful President now is at stake in Election 2008, as was made clear after the Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, on June 12 that the administration couldn\u2019t deny habeas corpus<\/em> rights to detainees at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, some of whom have been held as long as six years.<\/p>\n

In his dissent, right-wing Justice Antonin Scalia not only challenged the majority\u2019s legal arguments but pushed the emotional hot button that by recognizing this ancient right for challenging a government\u2019s power to imprison someone, the Supreme Court was putting Americans in danger.<\/p>\n

The ruling, Scalia said, \u201cwill almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.\u201d Three other right-wing justices \u2014 Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito \u2014 concurred in Scalia\u2019s dissent.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reacting to the Supreme Court, Republican presidential candidate John McCain backed the right-wing minority and called the majority’s ruling \u201cone of the worst decisions in the history of this country.\u201d<\/p>\n

By contrast, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama sided with the majority, calling habeas<\/em> rights for detainees \u201can important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n

If elected, McCain has vowed to appoint more justices like Roberts and Alito \u2014 George W. Bush\u2019s choices \u2014 meaning that if a President McCain gets to replace one of the five majority justices, the new court might well reinterpret the Constitution to legalize an all-powerful President who can act much like ancient kings once did.<\/p>\n

Then, if a President thinks that it might be a good idea to torture someone\u2019s child or bury somebody alive, the questions about the limits of his authority might not be hypothetical anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Consortium News\u00a0| All over the world down through history, political leaders who have engaged in torture and other grotesque crimes of state have justified their actions as necessary to protect their governments or their people or themselves. \u00a0 It was true when England\u2019s King Edward I had William Wallace \u2014 \u201cBraveheart\u201d \u2014 drawn and quartered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[27,76],"class_list":{"0":"post-4007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics","7":"tag-bush","8":"tag-warfare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}