The WaPo, which was once an enthusiastic cheerleader for Bush and his war, opines that Bush has crossed the line, and there will be consequences.
Happy Holidays, Mr. Bush.
Washington Post Editorial:
..[T]he president's overreaching has damaged U.S. standing in the war that he and Mr. Cheney rightly cite as their priority.
The overreaching began with the administration's refusal to hold hearings, as called for by the Geneva Conventions, to determine whether captured fighters deserved prisoner-of-war status and with its decision to set aside Army procedures for handling prisoners under those conventions. It extended to the president's assertion that he could designate any American an enemy combatant and lock him up for as long as he chose, without access to counsel or the courts. It includes his claimed right to kidnap people, even inside allied democracies, to transport them anywhere and to hold them as "ghost prisoners," again indefinitely, without allowing the International Committee of the Red Cross any access. Perhaps most shamefully, Mr. Bush has insisted on his right to inflict on detainees treatment that most people would regard as torture. Now added to the list is eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without a warrant. And there is probably more that we don't yet know.
A couple of threads run through all of these things. One is the grave harm they've done to U.S. prestige throughout the world and, more specifically, to the United States' ability to demand fair treatment for its soldiers and to urge other nations to respect human rights. The other is how unnecessary most of them seem to be. How would it have set back the war effort to have told the Red Cross the location of detainees? What would have been lost by asking Congress to expand the president's powers to order surveillance, if existing law was too restrictive?
The American people do want Mr. Bush to keep them safe, as he said yesterday, and they may be slow to wake to infringements on their liberty. But they also understand that due process can be infringed only so much before the injury becomes irreparable. The belated and limited awakening we are seeing in Congress is the consequence of many Americans realizing that the administration has gone too far.
Bush Snoopgate Spying Torture Eavesdropping King George
