Saturday, September 23, 2006
trying to pardon itself...
Bush Seeks Immunity for Violating War Crimes Act, by Elizabeth Holtzman.
...The ''pardon'' is buried in Bush's proposed legislation to create a new kind of military tribunal for cases involving top al-Qaida operatives. The ''pardon'' provision has nothing to do with the tribunals. Instead, it guts the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal law that makes it a crime, in some cases punishable by death, to mistreat detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and makes the new, weaker terms of the War Crimes Act retroactive to 9/11...They knew what they were doing, they knew they were violating Geneva Conventions and War Crimes Act. They figured they could use fear to get away with it. So far, fear has worked well.
...Creating immunity retroactively for violating the law sets a terrible precedent. The president takes an oath of office to uphold the Constitution; that document requires him to obey the laws, not violate them. A president who knowingly and deliberately violates U.S. criminal laws should not be able to use stealth tactics to immunize himself from liability, and Congress should not go along.
