Bush Admin: Torture is Good

I guess this is Shrub's idea of "faithfully executing" the laws -- he wants to take the War Crimes Act out and shoot it with Dick Cheney's shotgun.

The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a U.S. war crimes law “passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions.” The changes would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for committing “outrages upon [the] personal dignity” of prisoners.

"People have gotten worried, thinking that it's quite likely they might be under a microscope," said a U.S. official. Foreigners are using accusations of unlawful U.S. behavior as a way to rein in American power, the official said, and the amendments are partly meant to fend this off.

This is like letting John Gotti rewrite the RICO statute.

I guess somebody finally was able to make Shrub understand what was in that Hamdan ruling:

Once Common Article 3 applies to the conflict with al Qaeda, the legal framework within which we analyze the various interrogation and torture allegations changes dramatically, as does the . . . potential liability of various U.S. officials under the War Crimes Act.

So now we have the shameful spectacle of an American president asking his rubber stamp Congress to redefine the meaning of "war crimes," lest at some future date and in some future place he and his flunkies be forced to account for theirs. Just call it the Milosevic Amendment.

Is there a pit of slime so filthy these moral cretins won't drag us through it? A cup of national humiliation so bitter they won't make us drain it to the dregs?

Apparently not.

But I really wouldn't worry about it that much if I were one of the boys. With a bit of luck they should be able to push their CYA legislation through while the heelclickers are still in the majority.

Besides, even if they fail, and the legal situation does goes south on them, there's always Brazil. Who knows? Dick and Rummy might even make a few friends down there.

- billmon

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