TheAgitator.com
Interesting
Thursday, March 5th, 2009I guess the question is, did Bush and his top advisers really have an epiphany, or was the message here that only they could be trusted with such power?
In its final days, the George W. Bush administration issued a Justice Department opinion dramatically reversing most of the legal arguments that governed its war on terrorism – from interrogations to electronic surveillance.
On Monday, the Obama Justice Department declassified a Jan. 15 memo from Steven G. Bradbury, the outgoing principal deputy assistant attorney general, repudiating the interpretations of the Office of Legal Counsel from 2001 to 2003 regarding the president’s wartime authorities.
The memo upheld Congress’ right to make binding laws regarding the treatment of suspected terrorists and withdrew “doubtful interpretation” of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, questioning the obligation of the U.S. government to abide by international agreements on treatment of prisoners of war. In fact, the memo said, the president was obliged to follow international treaties, signed by the United States, prohibiting torture.
Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union national security project, said the “repudiation in this memo suggests a long-overdue recognition that the OLC’s legal analyses were indefensible.”
Under either scenario, it seems clear that Dick Cheney’s influence began to wane in the closing days of W’s second term (Cheney was at least consistent—he understood that the Democrats would one day wield the vast power he was trying to carve out for the president).
About seven years too late, unfortunately.
Or C) they were afraid that they might start getting prosecuted, and were attempting to mitigate that a little bit.
“I guess the question is, did Bush and his top advisers really have an epiphany, or was the message here that only they could be trusted with such power?”
I think it depends what party you believe; Democrats would say the latter part of the statement, Republicans would claim he had an epiphany. Personally, I’m skeptical of both parties and their claims.
I’m neither Dem nor Republican. I’m not even American. But to look at this very last minute change of plan as anything other than “it’s only okay to be fascists if you’re GOP, ’cause everybody else has to play by the rules” is naive in the extreme.
There’s another, element, too. The Bushies have tons of people in jail in gross violation of international law. They pretended to believe that this wasn’t so. Now that the Dems are in the WH a key purpose of changing their mind is to, in effect, remove even the fig leaf of legality from these detentions so they can watch the Dems squirm on the hook. They know damned well that Obama etc. aren’t just going to throw the gates open, so they want the taint of criminality attached to the new administration in the inevitable transition period as it tries to figure out what to do with all of these people. Really, we’re looking at the criminal version of a bully kid playing “tag”. The tree is “T” for him, but nobody else gets to touch it.
I think Republicans would agree with the latter part also. It’s doubtful many would think Bush’s original assertions of executive power were wrong.
I believe the money quote goes: “If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”
Pretty much your typical arrogant idiotic statement from someone who doesn’t understand his own personal limitations. I tend to believe that he doesn’t want the opposition to get any clever ideas.
If any president was in need of being indicted, he is it. He and many of his cronies.
I see this as blatant ass-covering, but I don’t see that it should work.
1. If a mobster decides to leave the mob, he might get a break from the judge, but he is still liable for the crimes he committed up to that point.
2. The fact that they changed their mind should not be determinative if mens rea is irrelevant to the crime. If the statutes say that you must get a FISA warrant to wire tap, the fact that you thought you didnt is irrelevant. It is only relevant to wilfullness, or if the statute has some wiggle clause that requires you to know that your actions are wrong.
3. In this case, the white house reversed itself after the election of Obama, and only just before Obama became president. If you were committing a crime and only decided to stop when the police were knocking on your door, you wouldnt have much of a defense, what with all the evidence sitting on the kitchen table.
If Ryan Frederick can get 10 years for a reasonable mistake, it would be a traversty of justice to allow some of these wilful lawbreakers to think that they should be given a pass.
SJE is right Bradbury is very belatedly trying to cover his ass. By putting them out there and repudiating them he is trying to make the point “hey these are YOO’S ideas not mine, in fact I disagree with them!”
However waiting 7 years to say that in my opinion somewhat invalidates that argument.
I also think the new administration does not mind the hullaballo in the least — takes pressure off of them while they work on these ridiculously huge plans.
It probably represents the opinions of good lawyers at OLC rather than those who were trying to justify ex post actions that the executive branch had already undertaken.
Prosecutions of any kind are extremely unlikely. While Gerald Ford headed off any prosecution of Nixon with a pardon, it seems unlikely that Nixon would have been prosecuted in any event (maybe if there had been an independent prosecutor.
No one wants to have the fight that would break out over the allocation of powers between Congress and the President that would ensue from any prosecution. Sometimes both sides prefer ambiguity (see, e.g., the War Powers Resolution).
I think that this goes in the same basket with “we accidently destroyed two interrogation tapes”….oh, that was “we accidently destroyed 96 interrogation tapes.” Isnt this what destroyed Enron and Arthur Anderson? Maybe this is a Texas thing.
#8: I think Obama is going to proceed slowly, and keep these in reserve. If things get really bad, he can always bring out some high-profile prosecutions….it’s like having compromising photos of your enemies.
I wonder how our new socialist society and stock market crash affect liberal bloggers? Where do they get money to buy pot? I wonder how long the Soros money will last?
I think it’s surely both. Bush’s people thought those powers were useful when they were wielding them and then they started to see the potential for abuse when they realized the other side would have the same ‘useful’ powers.
Regardless of whether it was pure cynicism or cynicism tinged with something else, I totally agree with the general notion that an outgoing administration should retract the legal arguments and especially the executive orders that the incoming administration criticized before it got into power. That way, the incoming administration will have to re-issue those executive orders and explicitly contradict itself if it grabs power that it previously thought was abusive. No administration (Obama’s or any other) should get a free ride in using powers that it saw fit to criticize. Being forced to take positive action to wield that authority subjects them to well-deserved scrutiny and forces them to justify their change in position.
Dude I’m still pleasantly surprised that Bush left the WH of his own accord.
Z: you raise a good point. We haven’t heard much from W. For all I know, he could be assembling an army of killer Cheney cyborgs to march on the white house.