Bush Policies

“In the days after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush was advised that – with the country on a wartime footing – the U.S. military could patrol American streets and burst into a ‘terrorist cell’ without a warrant.”

WE CONSTANTLY WORRY ABOUT THE COMING POLICE STATE, NOT STOPPING TO REALIZE THAT BUSH AND CHENEY TRIED TO CREATE THE AMERICAN GARRISON STATE IN THE 911 WAR RESOLUTION.  FOR SOME REASON, CONGRESS DID IT’S DUTY AND BALKED AT THE REQUEST TO MILITARIZE THE COUNTRY AND AUTHORIZE THE USE OF FULL MILITARY FORCE ON TARGETS WITHIN THE UNITED STATES!

WHERE IS THAT RESPONSIBLE CONGRESS TODAY, WHEN WE NEED TO STOP THE TERROR WAR AND SET ABOUT THE TASK OF REPAIRING THE DESTRUCTION UNLEASHED UPON THE WORLD BY THESE MONSTERS.  IF THEY HAD GOTTEN THEIR WAY, THEN PARTS OF THIS COUNTRY WOULD RESEMBLE AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ.

NEVER FORGET THAT THE SAME WARLORDS WHO WERE PUSHING THESE EXTREME CONSTITUTIONAL VIOLATIONS ARE THE SAME MEN WHO HATCHED THE LAME-BRAIN IDEA OF CREATING AN INTERNATIONAL JIHADI NETWORK AND PUSHED THE NEOCON AGENDA.

Bush Policies

Handling the truth

Will there be a day of reckoning for the Bush administration antiterror policies that may well have trampled the Constitution?

There’s a compelling public interest in conducting just such an independent, open-minded inquiry. Over the last week, the pressure to do so mounted exponentially – among congressional Democrats as well as civil libertarians and others.

That was due, in part, to the release of chilling antiterror documents crafted by Bush lawyers, as well as the CIA’s shocking admission that its agents destroyed 92 videotapes of interrogations likely involving torture.

It didn’t take much of an imagination to hear the chilling sound of jackboots on pavement echoing from the pages of the formerly secret legal memos.

In the days after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush was advised that – with the country on a wartime footing – the U.S. military could patrol American streets and burst into “a terrorist cell” without a warrant.

Bush was told he could ignore both the Geneva Conventions on humane prisoner treatment and the anti-torture treaty, and pack prisoners off to countries that tortured.

Finally, Bush lawyers contended that “First Amendment speech and press rights” could be muzzled given “the overriding need to wage war successfully.” (An irony to this last item is that the memo’s author was John C. Yoo, now a law professor who writes commentaries for newspapers, including The Inquirer.)

For its part, the CIA already revealed that videos of hundreds of hours of harsh interrogations had been tossed. Last week’s admission, though, only raised more questions about the legality of agency moves.

In releasing this information, President Obama performed a public service by shedding light on decisions and actions that cry out for further examination.

The president, though, would like to move on. Obama’s approach would be to craft antiterror strategies that comport with the law and human-rights treaties – certainly a must.

The forthright statement last week from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that “waterboarding is torture” and a technique never to be authorized by his Justice Department set the right tone. Now, the president has tasked Holder to review which interrogation techniques should be authorized.

Both the legal strategies and field tactics used by the U.S. military and intelligence officers at the behest of Bush have been exposed to a large degree in recent years, including warrantless spying on citizens. But the full story has yet to be told.

Amid last week’s disclosures, Senate Democrats under Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont held a hearing Wednesday on the feasibility of a so-called Truth Commission – a panel that might even offer immunity to witnesses in exchange for plumbing the depths of Bush policies.

Congressional Republicans uniformly reject Leahy’s proposal, but the idea has fairly broad backing in legal and civic circles. Even so, there are potential legal pitfalls that would have to be resolved.

A tried-and-true approach could be a congressional inquiry like the famed Church Committee, which in the mid-1970s exposed how the CIA and FBI opened Americans’ mail and committed other rogue acts.

Given the stakes, the nation’s antiterror tactics should be subject to no less scrutiny. The inquiry at the very least could help avoid a repeat of any past mistakes.