Bridge to the 17th century
Jun. 12th, 2004 04:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avramBack in 2000, I joked that Bush and his cronies wanted, if elected (back when I thought that election was the method they’d use to take power), to build a bridge to the 19th century. I don’t remember if it was my joke, or someone else’s I was passing along. I’m certainly not the only one who said it.
We were wrong; we misunderestimated them. According to memos uncovered by The Wall Street Journal, Pentagon lawyers presented the administration with arguments that would allow US forces to use tortures of the sort discovered to have occured at Abu Ghraib. Here’s the nut graf:
There’s your bridge right there. That’s not just overthrowing the rule of law enshrined in the US constitution. That’s going all the way back to the concept of the divine right of kings, which the British rid themselves of (with difficulty) in 1647. (Or maybe even back to the 13th century...?)
(Yeah, my readers who follow political blogs have known this all week. Sorry for just now getting around to it. And here’s a longer portion of that memo, in PDF form. And the definition of nut graf.)
We were wrong; we misunderestimated them. According to memos uncovered by The Wall Street Journal, Pentagon lawyers presented the administration with arguments that would allow US forces to use tortures of the sort discovered to have occured at Abu Ghraib. Here’s the nut graf:
To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a "presidential directive or other writing" that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."
There’s your bridge right there. That’s not just overthrowing the rule of law enshrined in the US constitution. That’s going all the way back to the concept of the divine right of kings, which the British rid themselves of (with difficulty) in 1647. (Or maybe even back to the 13th century...?)
(Yeah, my readers who follow political blogs have known this all week. Sorry for just now getting around to it. And here’s a longer portion of that memo, in PDF form. And the definition of nut graf.)