Home | Away

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Once the party of Lincoln, now the party of torture

So now we know the answer to my earlier question about why the Christian right isn’t upset about atrocities at Abu Ghraib.  It’s because one of their leading legal minds, U.S. Air Force General Counsel Mary L. Walker, came up with the rationale for torture as well as the argument that the President is utterly above the law in his capacity to authorize it.  56 pages of the memo are available here, though I’d like to excerpt one or two highlights:

In order to respect the President’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign, 18 U.S.C. ß 2430A (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority. . . .

As this authority is inherent in the President, exercise of it by subordinates would be best if it can be shown to have been derived from the President’s authority through Presidential directive or other writing.

A footnote to the previous sentence adds:  We note that this view is consistent with that of the Department of Justice.

Josh Marshall and Michael Froomkin spell out the Constitutional implications-- namely, that this memo argues that Bush may wield what Monty Python would call “supreme executive power” (and, need I add, his is not a supreme executive power that derives from the mandate of the masses).  Marshall writes that the claim about power “inherent in the President” should “prompt a serious consideration of the safety of the American republic under this president”; Froomkin says, “everyone who wrote or signed it strikes me as morally unfit to serve the United States.  If anyone in the higher levels of government acted in reliance on this advice, those persons should be impeached. If they authorized torture, it may be that they have committed, and should be tried for, war crimes.”

Let me try to tally up.  Bush has sole authority to designate people as enemy combatants, and to declare that the prohibition of torture in United States law is “inapplicable” to his decisions as Commander in Chief.  Indeed, he should issue a Presidential directive to allow us to torture detainees so as to shield all American torturers, and their superiors, from prosecution.  And this view is consistent with that of the Department of Justice.

OK, I’ve had it.  Never mind the election.  Try ‘em all for treason, and try ‘em now.  Mary Walker, Alberto Gonzales, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney, George Bush.  The whole rotten bunch.  For this, my friends, is well beyond what George Mason and James Madison had in mind when they settled on that phrase (much abused in the late 1990s), “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Finally, I want to apologize to Christian fundamentalists for suggesting that they were indifferent to the question of torture, when in fact some of their number were working doggedly to institute and justify it.  This humble blog stands corrected.

Posted by Michael on 06/08 at 06:30 PM
(2) Comments • (1) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages