This administration is abhorrent, I agree. As well as a bunch of other things.
However, there are problems in prosecuting Cheney for violation of the Geneva Conventions for torture. First, any Federal prosecutor who tried would get fired. Second, Cheney can argue that he does not have the authority to order people to be tortured. The military, CIA, etc. are all under the authority of the President. He is just exercising his right of free speech to 'advocate' torture. Bush is the only one who can authorize it (see how they have done a little soft shoe dance here to deflect criticim from Bush to Cheney).
An impassioned plea from teacherken on DailyKos: To me the crisis is immediate. I am hoping that the normal process of oversight can solve some of what is wrong, but I fear that this administration believes it can bully the Congress into backing down, and if not, that it has sufficiently stacked the Courts that it will win any legal confrontation. I am not absolute in that perspective - after all, it has lost repeatedly on the matter of the prisoners and the military commissions, etc. And despite my occasional rhetorical outbursts, I am not by nature confrontational. I would hope there would be some other way of righting our country. But here's my problem. I see no evidence that this administration is willing to be limited - by Congress or by Courts. It is perfectly prepared to try to run out the clock, and in the process destroy as much of the fabric of our society as it can - it will be not only public education and civil liberties, it will be the economic supports of the New Deal and the Great Society. It WILL use its pardon power to prevent prosecution after it leaves office, if it does leave office. And it will use every power it has to destroy records so that a subsequent administration, unable to prosecute the wrongdoing because of pardons, will also be unable to expose the depths of the corruption of our democracy.Teacherken concludes: If impeachment is off the table, so is democracy.On the other hand, I like what Sullivan has to say: We once executed Nazis for the same techniques as Cheney has approved and enforced. I don't want to see him impeached. I want to see him prosecuted under American and international law as a criminal.Amen. Maybe in order to get impeachment, we should be talking about criminal prosecution. Then impeachment will seem "sensible" and "serious" to the reflexive pseudo-centrism that wields so much power in our political discourse. And what does is say when a conservative (in the obsolete sense of the word) like Andrew Sullivan is advocating a stronger form of reigning in this administration than the diarists on DailyKos?
posted by Zachary Drake at 7:54 PM on Jun 29, 2007
"The drums of impeachment continue to beat"
1 Comment -
This administration is abhorrent, I agree. As well as a bunch of other things.
However, there are problems in prosecuting Cheney for violation of the Geneva Conventions for torture. First, any Federal prosecutor who tried would get fired. Second, Cheney can argue that he does not have the authority to order people to be tortured. The military, CIA, etc. are all under the authority of the President. He is just exercising his right of free speech to 'advocate' torture. Bush is the only one who can authorize it (see how they have done a little soft shoe dance here to deflect criticim from Bush to Cheney).
4:45 PM, June 30, 2007