Text 1352, 178 rader
Skriven 2006-06-23 22:33:11 av John Massey (1:123/789.0)
   Kommentar till text 1326 av ROSS SAUER (1:123/140)
Ärende: Torture.
================
"ROSS SAUER -> JOHN MASSEY" <1:123/140> wrote in message
news:17710$POL_INC@JamNNTPd...
 RS> JOHN MASSEY said to ROSS SAUER,

 RS>>> But Bush made a signing statement saying, "If I wanna torture, I
 RS>>> can, and to hell with the law!"

 JM>> Then you should have no problem in providing a cite for that singing
 JM>> statement.
 JM>> You may get away with brash lies in other echoes but the decorum
 JM>> demanded by the moderator here also requires you back up claims you
 JM>> make here.

 RS> Going to pretend this never happened?

You going to pretend this is  supports your claim?

Nowhere in the Charlie Savage, Globe Staff piece does it support you Quote.

Care to try again?

 RS> Bush could bypass new torture ban
 RS> Waiver right is reserved

 RS> By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff

 RS> January 4, 2006

 RS> WASHINGTON -- When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing
 RS> the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the
 RS> law under his powers as commander in chief.

 RS> After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ''signing statement"
 RS> -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation
 RS> of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in
 RS> the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This
 RS> means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and
 RS> legal specialists said.

 RS> ''The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent
 RS> with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in
 RS> Chief," Bush wrote, adding that this approach ''will assist in achieving
 RS> the shared objective of the Congress and the President . . . of
 RS> protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks."

 RS> Some legal specialists said yesterday that the president's signing
 RS> statement, which was posted on the White House website but had gone
 RS> unnoticed over the New Year's weekend, raises serious questions about
 RS> whether he intends to follow the law.

 RS> A senior administration official, who spoke to a Globe reporter about
 RS> the statement on condition of anonymity because he is not an official
 RS> spokesman, said the president intended to reserve the right to use
 RS> harsher methods in special situations involving national security.

 RS> ''We are not going to ignore this law," the official said, noting that
 RS> Bush, when signing laws, routinely issues signing statements saying he
 RS> will construe them consistent with his own constitutional authority.
 RS> ''We consider it a valid statute. We consider ourselves bound by the
 RS> prohibition on cruel, unusual, and degrading treatment."

 RS> But, the official said, a situation could arise in which Bush may have
 RS> to waive the law's restrictions to carry out his responsibilities to
 RS> protect national security. He cited as an example a ''ticking time bomb"
 RS> scenario, in which a detainee is believed to have information that could
 RS> prevent a planned terrorist attack.

 RS> ''Of course the president has the obligation to follow this law, [but]
 RS> he also has the obligation to defend and protect the country as the
 RS> commander in chief, and he will have to square those two
 RS> responsibilities in each case," the official added. ''We are not
 RS> expecting that those two responsibilities will come into conflict, but
 RS> it's possible that they will."

 RS> David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in
 RS> executive power issues, said that the signing statement means that Bush
 RS> believes he can still authorize harsh interrogation tactics when he sees
 RS> fit.

 RS> ''The signing statement is saying 'I will only comply with this law when
 RS> I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think
 RS> it's important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading
 RS> conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going
 RS> to stop me,' " he said. ''They don't want to come out and say it
 RS> directly because it doesn't sound very nice, but it's unmistakable to
 RS> anyone who has been following what's going on."

 RS> Golove and other legal specialists compared the signing statement to
 RS> Bush's decision, revealed last month, to bypass a 1978 law forbidding
 RS> domestic wiretapping without a warrant. Bush authorized the National
 RS> Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans' international phone calls and
 RS> e-mails without a court order starting after the terrorist attacks of
 RS> Sept. 11, 2001.

 RS> The president and his aides argued that the Constitution gives the
 RS> commander in chief the authority to bypass the 1978 law when necessary
 RS> to protect national security. They also argued that Congress implicitly
 RS> endorsed that power when it authorized the use of force against the
 RS> perpetrators of the attacks.

 RS> Legal academics and human rights organizations said Bush's signing
 RS> statement and his stance on the wiretapping law are part of a larger
 RS> agenda that claims exclusive control of war-related matters for the
 RS> executive branch and holds that any involvement by Congress or the
 RS> courts should be minimal.

 RS> Vice President Dick Cheney recently told reporters, ''I believe in a
 RS> strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live
 RS> in demands it. . . . I would argue that the actions that we've taken are
 RS> totally appropriate and consistent with the constitutional authority of
 RS> the president."

 RS> Since the 2001 attacks, the administration has also asserted the power
 RS> to bypass domestic and international laws in deciding how to detain
 RS> prisoners captured in the Afghanistan war. It also has claimed the power
 RS> to hold any US citizen Bush designates an ''enemy combatant" without
 RS> charges or access to an attorney.

 RS> And in 2002, the administration drafted a secret legal memo holding that
 RS> Bush could authorize interrogators to violate antitorture laws when
 RS> necessary to protect national security. After the memo was leaked to the
 RS> press, the administration eliminated the language from a subsequent
 RS> version, but it never repudiated the idea that Bush could authorize
 RS> officials to ignore a law.

 RS> The issue heated up again in January 2005. Attorney General Alberto
 RS> Gonzales disclosed during his confirmation hearing that the
 RS> administration believed that antitorture laws and treaties did not
 RS> restrict interrogators at overseas prisons because the Constitution does
 RS> not apply abroad.

 RS> In response, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, filed an
 RS> amendment to a Defense Department bill explicitly saying that that the
 RS> cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees in US custody is
 RS> illegal regardless of where they are held.

 RS> McCain's office did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.

 RS> The White House tried hard to kill the McCain amendment. Cheney lobbied
 RS> Congress to exempt the CIA from any interrogation limits, and Bush
 RS> threatened to veto the bill, arguing that the executive branch has
 RS> exclusive authority over war policy.

 RS> But after veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress approved it,
 RS> Bush called a press conference with McCain, praised the measure, and
 RS> said he would accept it.

 RS> Legal specialists said the president's signing statement called into
 RS> question his comments at the press conference.

 RS> ''The whole point of the McCain Amendment was to close every loophole,"
 RS> said Marty Lederman, a Georgetown University law professor who served in
 RS> the Justice Department from 1997 to 2002. ''The president has re-opened
 RS> the loophole by asserting the constitutional authority to act in
 RS> violation of the statute where it would assist in the war on terrorism."

 RS> Elisa Massimino, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, called
 RS> Bush's signing statement an ''in-your-face affront" to both McCain and
 RS> to Congress.

 RS> ''The basic civics lesson that there are three co-equal branches of
 RS> government that provide checks and balances on each other is being
 RS> fundamentally rejected by this executive branch," she said.

 RS> ''Congress is trying to flex its muscle to provide those checks [on
 RS> detainee abuse], and it's being told through the signing statement that
 RS> it's impotent. It's quite a radical view."

 RS> © Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company and The Boston Globe

 RS>  From Archae's Roost, Sheboygan, WI

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