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How Did President George W. Bush Get Torture Powers In "Military Commissions Act"? ASK JOHN McCAIN! - RI10
How Did President
George W. Bush
Get Torture Powers
In “Military
Commissions Act”?
ASK JOHN McCAIN!
- RI10
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/27/mccain/index.html
John McCain and Bush's torture powers
The alleged anti-torture maverick has done more to enable and legalize torture than any other political figure in the U.S.
Glenn Greenwald
Apr. 27, 2008 10:40 EDT | An article by The New York Times' Mark Mazzetti this morning discloses a letter (.pdf) from the Justice Department to Congress which asserts "that American intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law". In other words, even after all of the dramatic anti-torture laws and other decrees, the Bush administration insists that American interrogators have the right to use methods that are widely considered violations of the Geneva Conventions if we decide that doing so might help "thwart terrorist attacks".
There are two reasons, and two reasons only, that the Bush administration is able to claim this power: John McCain and the Military Commissions Act. In September, 2006, McCain made a melodramatic display -- with great media fanfare -- of insisting that the MCA require compliance with the Geneva Conventions for all detainees. But while the MCA purports to require that, it also vested sole and unchallenged discretion in the President to determine what does and does not constitute a violation of the Conventions. After parading around as the righteous opponent of torture, McCain nonetheless endorsed and voted for the MCA, almost single-handedly ensuring its passage. That law pretends to compel compliance with the Conventions, while simultaneously vesting the President with the power to violate them -- precisely the power that the President is invoking here to proclaim that we have the right to use these methods. As Columbia Law Professor Michael Dorf wrote at the time:
Yet if that is what Americans believe, they are sorely mistaken. On nearly every issue, the MCA gives the White House everything it sought. It immunizes government officials for past war crimes; it cuts the United States off from its obligations under the Geneva Conventions, and it all but eliminates access to civilian courts for non-citizens -- including permanent residents whose children are citizens -- that the government, in its nearly unreviewable discretion, determines to be unlawful enemy combatants.
Destroying the protections of the Geneva Conventions while pretending to preserve them was accomplished by Section 6(a)(3) of the MCA (.pdf), which provides:
Paragraph (C) provides that such decisions "shall be authoritative" under U.S. law. McCain supported the MCA knowing that the President retained virtually unfettered discretion to decree that the interrogation methods we were using that are widely considered in the civilized world to be torture could continue. That's John McCain -- and his Principled Maverickism and alleged torture opposition -- in a nutshell. He continuously preens as some sort of independent moralizer only to use that status to endorse and enable that which he claims to oppose. In Great American Hypocrites, I wrote about his numerous deceitful maneuvers to legalize torture as follows:
In 2005, McCain led the effort in the Senate to pass the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), which made the use of torture illegal. While claiming that he had succeeded in passing a categorical ban on torture, however, McCain meekly accepted two White House maneuvers that diluted his legislation to the point of meaningless: (1) the torture ban expressly applied only to the U.S. military, but not to the intelligence community, which was exempt, thus ensuring that the C.I.A.—the principal torture agent for the United States—could continue to torture legally; and (2) after signing the DTA into law, which passed the Senate by a vote of 90–9, President Bush issued one of his first controversial "signing statements" in which he, in essence, declared that, as President, he had the power to disregard even the limited prohibitions on torture imposed by McCain's law.
McCain never once objected to Bush's open, explicit defiance of his cherished anti-torture legislation, preferring to bask in the media’s glory while choosing to ignore the fact that his legislative accomplishment would amount to nothing. Put another way, McCain opted for the political rewards of grandstanding on the issue while knowing that he had accomplished little, if anything, in the way of actually promoting his "principles."
A virtual repeat of that sleight-of-hand occurred in 2006, when McCain first pretended to lead opposition to the Military Commissions Act (MCA), only thereafter to endorse this most radical, torture-enabling legislation, almost single-handedly ensuring its passage. After insisting that compelled adherence to the anti-torture ban of the Geneva Conventions was a nonnegotiable item for him, McCain ultimately blessed the MCA despite the fact that it left it to the President to determine, in his sole discretion, which interrogation methods did or did not comply with the Conventions' provisions.
Thus, once again, McCain created a self-image as a principled torture opponent with one hand, and with the other, ensured a legal framework that would not merely fail to ban, but would actively enable, the President’s ability to continue using interrogation methods widely considered to be torture. Indeed, by casting himself as the Supreme Arbiter of torture morality, McCain's support for this torture-enabling law became Bush and Cheney's most potent instrument for legalizing the very interrogation methods that McCain, for so long, flamboyantly claimed to oppose.
And then this year, McCain voted to oppose a ban on waterboarding, claiming that it was unnecessary given that waterboarding is already considered illegal by the Bush administration -- an assertion about which he later admitted he had no real knowledge and which is, in any event, simply untrue.
As the NYT story illustrates this morning, we continue to be a rogue nation when it comes to international norms on the treatment of detainees. The DOJ explicitly claims the right to use methods otherwise prohibited under the Conventions as long as it claims doing so is necessary to stop the Terrorists. And despite his media-sustained reputation as a righteous, principled opponent of torture, much of these disgraces are the direct by-product of John McCain's work.
-- Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald's
Unclaimed Territory
I was previously a
constitutional law and civil
rights litigator in New York. I
am the author of two
New York Times Bestselling books:
"How Would a Patriot Act?"
(May, 2006), a critique of the
Bush administration's use of
executive power, and
"A Tragic Legacy" (June, 2007),
which examines the Bush legacy.
My third book,
"Great American Hypocrites:
Toppling the Big Myths of
Republican Politics", examines
the manipulative electoral tactics
used by the GOP and propagated
by the establishment press, and
will be released in April, 2008,
by Random House/Crown.
Tabacco: John McCain claims he is his own man. That’s a pretty hard claim to swallow when McCain has his lips so firmly pressed against George’s buttocks.
But this seems to be the year for attempting to appropriate another’s leadership qualities as one’s own. Hillary has more qualifications to be president than Barack because she shared Bill’s bed. McCain is more qualified to be president than either Hillary or Barack because he has learned to mimic George’s policies to a T.
The trouble with both of those implied appropriations is that if sleeping with Bill qualifies Hillary to be president, then Monica should be qualified to at least be Secretary of State in her administration, if not president herself.
And if America wants to get rid of George W. Bush, why would we elect another Republican, particularly one that has assumed the policies, rhetoric and domineering demeanor of the man himself! An unusual strategy by the GOP to say the least! That is, unless you buy into the prevalent theory that this is a throwaway election so far as the Republican Party is concerned, and the GOP candidate, whoever that might be, is serving merely as a Sacrificial Lamb.
McCain implies he and Bush are different. Let’s see! Both are Republican. Bush was governor of Texas while McCain is a Senator from Arizona. Bush prefers non-torture Torture while McCain prefers the unadulterated variety. Bush panders to Evangelicals with Faith-based Initiatives while McCain panders to Evangelicals with alternating rhetoric. McCain was a Prisoner of War while Bush is a Prisoner of Big Oil. Bush has practiced portraying a tough, loud-talking, incorrigible know-it-all leader while McCain has to work hard to suppress his stubborn interior and uncompassionate disposition with that permanent smile, plastered on his face, and soft speaking voice so reminiscent of Joan Crawford in a love scene. Bush started the Iraq War while McCain only plans to perpetuate it. Bush wants Illegal Alien Amnesty from which to recruit military fodder while McCain wants Illegal Alien Amnesty from which to recruit military fodder – not even a subtle difference in that one. So far as I can see, the major difference between John McCain and George W. Bush is that McCain is significantly shorter!
Tabacco: I consider myself both a funnel and a filter. I funnel information, not readily available on the Mass Media, which is ignored and/or suppressed. I filter out the irrelevancies and trivialities to save both the time and effort of my Readers and bring consternation to the enemies of Truth & Fairness! When you read Tabacco, if you don’t learn something NEW, I’ve wasted your time.
In 1981's 'Body Heat', Kathleen Turner said, "Knowledge is power".
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization) – Think Tank For Other 95% Of World
LOST IN THE SAUCE!
I've been talking about the same thing and wonder why the Obama camp hasn't
used this information. But I think they are waiting to see how McCain
contains himself during the campaign as to whether they will use the
information.