A Cunning and Premeditated Abuse Of Power

Memo Legitimizes Torture, Puts President Above Law

According to news reports, a draft of a March 2003 memo on interrogation methods by Pentagon lawyers advised U.S. government officials to disregard the Geneva Conventions and the Army's own Field Manual for intelligence interrogation, after "commanders at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained in late 2002 that with conventional methods they weren't getting enough information from prisoners." A team of administration lawyers concluded in the draft prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal anti-torture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security." The contents of the draft obtained by the WSJ, calls into question administration claims about Abu Ghraib, and suggest methods used there may have been sanctioned by the White House at the highest levels.

Of course this �legal opinion� has now weight at law. It is nothing more then a piece of paper produced by a house counsel to be waived in the face of detractors as justification for almost any ungodly behavior the Administration chooses to employ. And as the beginning of a defense against the charges of war crimes which will � within time � which is in this Administrations future.

I wonder why those who now defend Slobodan Milosevic, former President of Yugoslavia, did not think of this excuse. Or maybe now, plan to use President Bush�s legal finding as a basis for over turning Milosevic�s conviction as a War Criminal, and butcher that he actually was.

I see no distinctions why, if it works, as Bush�s �Get Out of Jail Free� card why it can not word for a mass murdered like Slobodan Milosevic.
www.globalsecurity.org...
(online.wsj.com...)
www.nytimes.com...
www.whitehouse.gov...
msnbc.msn.com...