A White House memo has been released that shows how George W. Bush’s lawyers justified the use of torture, in clear violation of the law and the Constitution itself: They claimed that the President of the United States has the power to break the law whenever deemed necessary.
The memo says of torture: “If the criminal prohibitions outlined above applied, and an interrogation method might violate those prohibitions, necessity or self-defense could provide justifications for any criminal liability.”
What that little sentence says, in lawyer-speak, is that, regardless of the fact that torture is against the law, and regardless of the fact that “an interrogation method”, such as waterboarding, violates laws against torture, the President of the United States can break those laws anyway.
Why can the President of the USA break the law? For what reasons?
The memo gives two reasons the President can break the law:
1. Self-defense
2. Necessity
The trouble is that the Constitution of the United States does not support these justifications. The writ of habeas corpus, the Constitution says, can only be suspended “in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion”. General “self-defense” of the nation is not a sufficient justification. Read the Constitution yourself if you don’t believe that.
The more troubling justification for the President of the United States violating the law is that of “necessity”. This memo essentially says that George W. Bush can break the law whenever he thinks it is necessary to do so.
This White House memo wasn’t just drafted by some out-of-control lawyer on his own initiative. The White House asked for the memo to be written after top level discussions had been held about whether the torture being done by government agents was legal. This memo is absolute proof that the Bush Administration intended to have prisoners tortured, was aware that to do so would be against the law, and sought advice from lawyers about how war criminals could be defended in a court of law if they were caught.
Well, now they have been caught. What’s not yet clear is how high up the discussions of torture went within the Bush White House. How can we avoid, knowing what we know now, an independent investigation of the White House’s plans to torture prisoners? How can we avoid a subpoena of the President to determine what he knew and when he knew it?
The answer to that question is all too easy: Impeachment is bad politics for the Democratic Party. It might cost the Democrats elections in swing districts.
The Democratic Party isn’t in the business of protecting the Constitution and the rule of law in the United States. The Democratic Party is in the business of getting its politicians elected. So, the Democrats have allowed the rule of law and the Constitution to be trampled, so that they could win elections.
Democratic leaders in Congress have known about this memo for a long time. The memo has only been publicly released because of the work of the ACLU. Democratic leaders in Congress haven’t lifted a finger to make its contents public. They were happy to have the American people ignorant of what was going on.
The Democratic leaders in Congress didn’t want to make a fuss. They didn’t want impeachment on the table. They just wanted power.
In that way, the Democratic leaders in Congress are just as responsible for the violation of the law as the President himself. Just like President Bush, when the time came for them to choose between their power and the law, they chose power.
This has been BLATANTLY going on for almost 8 years now and all we do is complain! Where’s the incentive for politicians to change their ways if there is nothing but verbal or written protest? If we have no legal means of changing the government, or if the “government” becomes a self-protecting cabal that we don’t like and which is abusing its power – what are we to do to evoke CHANGE?
We DO have legal means of changing the government.
The unfortunate part of this is that the Democratic leadership in Congress isn’t the only group to share in Bush’s blame.
The American people are to blame too. They’ve had the information, and most Americans have chosen inaction, just as Congress has.
Writing this article is not just a way for me to “complain”, Tom, although, yes, it is a complaint, in the sense of a grievance for which we can petition the government.
I wrote this article in order to put these facts before the faces of as many American voters as I can. Writing for Irregular Times gives me the largest audience I’m likely to get.
It is my hope that, by sharing this information, I will help to shift a few Americans from inaction to action, and get them to become involved in the political process again, which is, to get back to the first point, the legal means of changing the government.
The American people need to change and take responsibility if their government is to change and take responsibility.
THAT’S WHAT WE HAVE ELECTED OFFICIALS FOR! They’re supposed to act on our behalf, so when they don’t . . .
we resort to petitions, letters to the editor and phone calls to our legislators WHO IGNORE US AND HAVE THEIR OWN AGENDA!!!!
Some great redress of grievances there boy, woo-hoo!
Look around – do you see anything getting any better along the lines of oh, like the Iraq debacle, health care, pollution and the environment, etc.? No, because the damn government doesn’t work for US it works for corporate America and wealthy donors to our legislators.
“… because the damn government doesn’t work for US it works for corporate America and wealthy donors to our legislators.”
And, as I’ve written before, most Americans send their money off to the corporations instead of to local small businesses.
At some point, Tom, we have to stop saying it’s just the fault of other people what’s going on, and look at our own part in the big picture.
Yeah, our own part is either inaction or some kind of political involvement (like at least voting or signing petitions) – either way, since 2000 NO ONE AT THE TOP IS LISTENING OR ACTING ON OUR BEHALF!
We better find another means of getting the corporate influence out of our politics or it won’t matter who is elected – it’ll just be more of the same unsustainable (if you’re middle class or below) condition we’ve all come to know and put up with.
Want to get corporate influence out of politics, Tom? A good way to start is to buy as few corporate-manufactured products as possible, and replace them with as many local, non-corporate things as you can. It’s not easy, but it’s a good way to take daily activism to reduce the economic power corporations use in Washington D.C.
There are things that we can do, and the situation is not hopeless, but people do need to start taking strong action.