Text 1326, 167 rader
Skriven 2006-06-22 12:19:00 av ROSS SAUER (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av JOHN MASSEY
Ärende: Torture.
================
JOHN MASSEY said to ROSS SAUER,

JM> RS> But Bush made a signing statement saying, "If I wanna torture, I
JM> 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.

Going to pretend this never happened?

Bush could bypass new torture ban
Waiver right is reserved

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff 

January 4, 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

''Congress is trying to flex its muscle to provide those checks [on 
detainee abuse], and it's being told through the signing statement that 
it's impotent. It's quite a radical view." 
 
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company and The Boston Globe  

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