War Crimes Made Easy

War Crimes Made Easy
How the Bush Administration Legalized Intelligence Deceptions, Assassinations, and Aggressive War
By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith

How has the Bush administration gotten away with such apparently illegal acts as hiding intelligence reports from Congress, creating secret prisons, establishing death squads, kidnapping people and spiriting them across national borders, and planning unprovoked wars? Part of the answer lies in the administration's deliberate effort, initiated even before September 11, 2001, to tear down any existing legal and institutional means for preventing, exposing, or punishing violations of national and international law by American officials.

Back in 2002, Adriel Bettleheim wrote in the Congressional Quarterly that Vice President Dick Cheney "considers it the responsibility of the current administration to reclaim those lost powers for the institution of the presidency." Indeed, the Bush administration has tried to remove all conceivable restrictions on the "imperial presidency," setting its sights in particular on dismantling the Freedom of Information Act, the Intelligence Oversight Act, and the War Powers Resolution. Restoring limits on the power of the executive branch to conceal information, tell (and hide) lies, make war at its own discretion, or kidnap, torture, and kill without interference from Congress, the courts, and the public will be crucial tasks, if future Abu Ghraibs are to be prevented.

The Freedom of Information Act provides a good example of the constraints Cheney aimed to remove. Essentially a sunshine law passed by Congress in 1966, the FOIA requires that government agencies disclose their records upon written request. The Act provides nine "exemptions" to the public's right of access, but in the Clinton years Attorney General Janet Reno advised agencies that information should be released as long as it did "no foreseeable harm."

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a sweeping memorandum which interpreted out of existence much of the FOIA, discouraging government agencies from releasing any information that could conceivably be withheld. ("Any discretionary decision by your agency to disclose information protected under the FOIA should be made only after full and deliberate consideration of the institutional, commercial, and personal privacy interests that could be implicated by disclosure of the information.") Department and agency heads who decided to withhold records were "assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions" unless they lacked a sound legal basis -- as determined by the administration itself.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=41419

. . . John Asscroft lost the senate race to a dead man. Most Missourians I know were totally ashamed of the guy. Then he winds up being Attorney General. This bunch of goons is determined to wreck the Constitution, and set up a fascist theocracy.

I remember reading "Profiles of Courage" as a kid, and just assuming that our leaders were intelligent and noble. . . .