Bush to Be Premptively Pardoned?

[Doug]

ACLU Says Specter’s NSA Legislation Would Pardon President’s Illegal Actions; Group Calls for Inspector General Investigation (5/16/2006)

See here.

WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union today strongly condemned a new proposal drafted by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) that embraces the president’s claims of inherent power to secretly wiretap Americans without meaningful checks. Also today, the organization renewed its request to the Justice Department’s Inspector General to open an investigation into the involvement of the department in the warrantless spying on Americans by the National Security Agency.

"The Specter bill would essentially whitewash the illegal actions of the Bush administration," said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director. "Congress should not move forward on any legislation until and unless it has a full understanding of the facts. President Bush has used 9/11 as a blank check to abuse his power to the detriment of the rule of law and the Constitution. What we need now is vigorous congressional oversight and a thorough investigation into the NSA’s illegal spying programs."

Specter’s new draft would replace a bill he had previously introduced, S.2453, the National Security Surveillance Act of 2006. The new version would pardon the president for authorizing the warrantless wiretapping of Americans, in violation of current criminal and intelligence laws.
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DOUG
That was in May. Now it's getting approved in a committee:

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ACLU Slams Senate Judiciary Committee’s Approval of NSA Spying Bills (9/13/2006)

WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union today strongly rebuked the Senate Judiciary Committee for adopting legislation that approves warrantless spying on Americans by the National Security Agency. The move follows a recent court decision finding the surveillance both illegal and unconstitutional. The Bush administration has thus far stonewalled efforts by the committee to conduct meaningful oversight over the program.

"Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee acted as a rubber stamp for the administration’s abuse of power," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Congress has a right and obligation to conduct meaningful oversight on the unlawful actions of the president. But instead of investigating lawbreaking, the Senate Judiciary Committee wants to make it legal. We urge the full Senate to reject any attempts to ratify this illegal program."

By a vote of 10 to 8, the committee approved S.2453, the "National Security Surveillance Act." That bill, crafted by Vice-President Dick Cheney and Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) gives the president the option of complying - or not - with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the protections of the Fourth Amendment.

The bill would also: vastly increase the government’s statutory power to examine all international phone conversations and emails, making warrantless surveillance of Americans’ conversations the rule rather then the exception and expand the ability to conduct warrantless physical searches of Americans’ homes.

Read the rest here.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I've already called Mark and Blanche (their offices, anyway) for whatever good it will do. Those Rs definitely think they have the elections scammed for good, or they wouldn't be putting this dictatorial tool in the hands of a potential Democratic president (or they have the foresight of a gnat).

[Dardedar]

This article gives a powerful and concise summary of what is so wrong with America right now:



***

Control the Dictionary, Control the World
By Bernard Weiner
The Crisis Papers

Tuesday 19 September 2006

Clinton tried to fudge the truth when he claimed he'd "never had sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," but he felt he could get away with that language because, in his mind, he defined "sexual relations" as referring to vaginal intercourse.

Bush, with a straight face, tells us that he has never authorized torture, and he thinks he can get away with that lie because the public is mostly unaware that his administration has totally altered the definition of "torture."

According to the infamous 2002 torture memos, which effectively set the policy, torture no longer means what we all understand that term to mean (physical beatings, shoving suspects under water to "drown" them unless they give up secrets, electric shocks to the genitals, unbearable stress, sexual abuse and humiliation, etc.). No, those internationally-understood definitions have become, under Bush&Co., "quaint" remnants from an earlier era.

Under the leadership of Alberto Gonzales and other lawyers - mainly from the White House, Rumsfeld's office, and Cheney's office - the Bush administration went through all sorts of moral gyrations and emerged with new definitions of what constituted torture. Basically, it's not torture if it doesn't kill you or if the excrutiating pain and injuries don't lead to organ failure.

You think I'm exaggerating? Check it out for yourself. The Justice Department's August 1, 2002, legal memo concluded that "the ban on torture is limited to only the most extreme forms of physical and mental harm," which the memo defined as akin to "death or organ failure." [See also "Bush's Torture Deceit: What 'Is' Is" and "Gonzales Grilled on Role in Torture at Confirmation Hearing."]

So when Bush says the US doesn't torture and he would never authorize torture, in a sense he believes himself to be telling the truth, since he transformed the meaning of "torture" to give it a totally different, exceedingly narrow, interpretation. The administration apparently believes that as a result of interrogations under what Bush calls its "alternative set of procedures," only if the detainees die or are the victims of organ failure could officials rightfully be accused of authorizing torture. (Actually, it's estimated that perhaps as many as 100 detainees have died while in US custody, scores of them directly from torture.)

A Few "Exceptions" From Torture Laws

Furthermore, Bush is asserting that US laws against torture, and Congressional oversight of such activity, should apply only to interrogations that take place on American soil. If the CIA uses the "alternative procedures" in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or in the secret CIA prisons abroad, those don't count. Plus, the administration has moved to shield those who authorized and carry out "harsh" interrogations from national and international laws against mistreatment of prisoners. Meanwhile, of course, a few lower-level, enlisted "bad apples" have been tried, convicted, and sent to prison.

Likewise, according to the Bush administration, the "extraordinary rendition" of especially recalcitrant prisoners to friendly countries abroad that are notorious for extreme physical torture does not count as the US cooperating in the administration of torture. The Bush crew play variations on: "They were tortured there? Really? We are shocked, shocked! We don't approve of torture and had no idea it was used on prisoners entrusted to their care." Yeah, sure.

But recently, in making the case to Congress that it should pass the administration's draconian laws permitting such "alternative procedures," Bush let the cat out of the bag and admitted that several al-Qaida suspects gave up a good deal of valuable information while being interrogated in those secret CIA prisons abroad. But he still denies that his administration carried out "torture" there. Does he think we're stupid?

Do you see how it works? And the ramifications of how it works? In short, Bush&Co. have simply rewritten the dictionary to remove their legal liability for such crimes, and in the process have rewritten the rules under which they, and their subordinates, act. When reality doesn't meet their needs, they don't consider making alterations to their policies; they just change the definition of what's "real."

Bush Desperate for Torture Victory

In a sign of how desperate Bush is to maintain complete control of the torture definition - and thus keep himself and other top US officials out of the war-crimes court in The Hague - Bush took a rare visit to Congress last week to try to forestall defeat of his torture/military tribunals bill. It was a definition struggle again.

The Geneva Convention on the treatment of captured prisoners is quite clear and specific: no country is permitted to use "cruel" treatment or "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" on prisoners in its care. Too "vague," says Bush. Instead, he suggests, CIA interrogators need "latitude" (euphemism: "clarity") in interrogating and torturing suspects so that they won't be nervously looking over their shoulders at war-crimes charges.

The Pentagon's senior lawyers think Geneva's definitions are quite clear and openly disagreed with the hardline Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld interpretation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Even Colin Powell bestirred his calcified conscience to point out that by trying to do an end-around Geneva, the US risked losing the moral high ground internationally. Also, as Senator John McCain (who was tortured as a POW in Hanoi) and others have pointed out, the US would put its captured troops in great jeopardy of "cruel and degrading" treatment - in other words, torture - similar to what the CIA was meting out in its secret prisons abroad.

Republican "moderate" senators McCain, Graham, Snowe, Warner and others have been demanding that the US remain consistent with the Geneva protections and also provide some legal safeguards to suspects on trial in military tribunals. But time and time again, these so-called "moderates," under extreme Roveian pressure, have caved and given Bush what he wants. As I write this, it's unclear whether they have the courage to stick to their guns this time. We shall see. In the meantime, get this: Bush threatened to close down the CIA's questioning of terrorist suspects unless Congress approves his bill. Talk about cutting off your nation's nose to spite your personal face! Blackmail as a pre-emptive veto.

The Immorality of "Pre-Emption"

Let's move to another definition, at another level. Bush's National Security Strategy asserts that the US can "pre-emptively" attack another country when it determines that country might possibly be thinking of attacking America or grossly harming our interests. In the "old days" - that is, pre-Bush - the definition of "pre-emption" meant that a country, in some circumstances, was permitted under international law to act first when faced with an imminent threat of attack.

In Bushspeak, it doesn't matter that the countries in question might be 10 or 15 years out from being a viable threat, or that, while they might be antagonistic to US policies, they have no intent of ever actually attacking America. No, according to the Bush Doctrine, you destroy possible or potential enemies first, long before they have the chance to even think of doing the US harm.

That's one of the administration's ex-post-facto justifications for having invaded and occupied Iraq. Once the early rationales for attacking were shown to be false - those big lies including that Iraq had stockpiles of WMD, and was allied with al-Qaida in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks - then the administration went back to its "pre-emption" rationalization, in effect asserting: "We had to attack before Saddam got close to reconstituting his weapons programs; even though US/UK intel was confirming that Iraq was well-contained and that it could be 10 years before they would be a believable threat to anybody, we had to act now, to abort that development in its blastocyst stage before that potentially dangerous fetus could grow and do us harm as an adult."

Transfer that rationalization theory to a trial for murder: "Your honor, I cannot be convicted of murdering the victim by shooting him six times. I fully believed he was thinking of doing me harm, maybe next year or the year after that, and so I took him out pre-emptively. It was a clear case of early self-defense." That explanation should satisfy a Bush administration jury.

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[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

There's a reason for the "habeas corpus" guarantee in the Bill of Rights, as well as the warranted search guarantee and every Democrat, Independent who "polls with Democrats", and "moderate" Republican had better vote to keep them strong or, considering Cheney's insistence that anyone who disagrees with W is a traitor, they may find themselves picked up and disappeared.