Hell, why isn't he on trial for war crimes, yet? This article claims that the head of the DoD approved the abuse at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib even though he knew it was a violation of the Geneva Convention and U.S. laws against torture. Mr. Rumsfeld claims that they broke no laws, as does the President, as is evident from his repeated claim that his order was that POWs and other detainees were to be treated within the bounds of the law.
Of course, this duplicity is available to them due to the no infamous DOJ memo that says that the President is inherently above the law -- able to set any law that is inconvenient to him aside. This philosophy is further pushed to claim that even if the President is bound by the law, Congress has no power to regulate the military, its rules, or how prisoners are treated because that would interefe with the President's role as Commander-in-Chief. That of course reduces our systemof checks and balances to that of a petty military dictatorship, where the guy in charge of the military makes all the rules.
As a reward, the lawyer who wrote the "President is King" memo was appointed to the Federal Bench, where he will have ample opportunity to further mangle the Constitution to produce the police state that the President and his allies pine for.
People need to remember these antics during the Fall elections, because despite the DOJ's repudiation of this vision of the Imperial Presidency, the last three years have shown a clear disregard for civil liberties, role of the executive and the judiciary, and the proper distance between business and government. They've also shown a remarkable lack of ethics on a scale that makes the Grant Administration look like choir boys.
Posted by Chris at June 25, 2004 02:35 PM