Eugene Robinson: Combining Lies with Straw Men, Claiming Moral High Ground?

Power That Bush Can't Just Take

By Eugene Robinson

Tuesday, December 27, 2005; Page A25

Since the holiday season is a time of generosity and goodwill toward all -- even those who torture the Constitution and hoodwink the nation into ill-advised wars -- let's do a little thought experiment.

Let's assume that George W. Bush's claim of virtually unfettered presidential power is not just an exercise in reclaiming executive perks that Dick Cheney believes were wrongly surrendered after Watergate. Let's assume that Bush genuinely believes he needs the right to blanket the nation with electronic surveillance, detain indefinitely anyone he considers a terrorist suspect, make those detainees disappear into secret, CIA-run prisons, and subject them to "waterboarding" and other degradations. Let's assume for the moment that the president's only desperate motivation is to prevent another day like Sept. 11, 2001.

Let's go even further and assume he decided to invade Iraq for the same reason. Even in a thought experiment, we can't forgive the way he snowed the country into believing there was some connection between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks; nor can we forget the way he hyped the flawed intelligence about weapons of mass destruction -- we're being generous here, not stupid. But let's assume that however calculated and cynical the machinations, and however wrongheaded the decision to go to war, the underlying motive was purely to avoid another catastrophic terrorist attack.

All right: Given these overly kind assumptions, can this administration's usurpation of power somehow be justified?

Every time I work it through, the answer I come up with is no. The president has no right to ignore the rule of law as if it were a mere nuisance.

The problem is that if the president really were determined to do anything it takes to prevent another terrorist strike, why not suspend habeas corpus, as Lincoln did during the Civil War? That way you could arrest everyone who could possibly be a terrorist, or who once lived next door to a suspected terrorist's uncle, and you could hold those people as long as you wanted. Why stop at surveillance of international telephone calls and e-mails? Why not listen in on, say, all interstate calls as well? Or just go for it and scarf up all the domestic communications the National Security Agency's copious computers can hold?

Why stop at waterboarding? Why not go all the way and pull out some fingernails, if that would give Americans another tiny increment of security? Wouldn't electric shocks make us safer still? Just order the White House lawyers to draw up yet another thumb-on-the-scale legal opinion explaining how torture isn't really torture, and have at it.

I can only assume that Eugene is Brain damaged. That is the charitable thought path. Less charitable, but probably more accurate, he is intent on decieving his readers for the sake of his undefendable political position. So to help our brain damaged friend, let's make some information available.

1. In order to Lie, you have to have the intent to deceive.
2. The NSA's electronic surveillance does not "blanket the nation with electronic surveillance." They are not interested in the Nation at large, only al Qaeda connected and sympathetic groups and individuals.
3. A President cannot "usurp" powers to which he is already entitled. See Presidential Executive Order 12139, P.E.O. 12333, P.E.O. 12949, the statement by Jamie Gorelick in 1995 before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the 2001 Joint Senate (23) and House (64) (resolutions) which authorize the President to use "any and all means necessary" to defend the nation against another attack by terrorists.
4. We don't torture. It is against the law, and has been for some time. The techniques being use in interogations do not amount to torture.

So now Eugene, you can rest easy none of those terrible things you allude to are occurring. Of course, I know you don't care about the truth, only your misrepresentations.

Full Story: More Lies from the Post

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