The "Compromise" On Torture, or A Time For Fear

There was a lot written about the debate over Bush's torture demands today, and none of it good.

As Ezra Klein points out, this was the extent of the White House concession on their desire to keep detaining and torturing innocent people, free of government oversight:

[T]he legislation will enumerate "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions which, if committed, could expose US officials to criminal prosecution. The list includes acts such as rape, murder and intentional infliction of bodily harm. For less-than-grave breaches, however, President Bush would be given authority to interpret the Geneva Convention provisions through an executive order. Defendants and their lawyers will not be given access to classified material in military tribunals, and prosecutors will enjoy wide latitude, according to Hadley, in the use of hearsay evidence, with burden on the accused to show that such evidence is either unreliable on irrelevant before it could be excluded.

Not unlike the warrantless wiretap debate, the White House got everything it wanted after some pretend resistance from Republican senators who at least wanted the right to claim that they're independent thinkers. Better for the election, you see.

Charlie Pierce writes that while the Democrats were content to watch the GOP seemingly fight each other over this one, it played out as a resounding defeat for the Democrats-- and more astonishingly, for the rights we consider to be the most fundamental to our way of life:

And the Democratic Party was nowhere in this debate. It contributed nothing. On the question of whether or not the United States will reconfigure itself as a nation which tortures its purported enemies and then grants itself absolution through adjectives -- "Aggressive interrogation techniques" -- the Democratic Party had…no opinion. On the issue of allowing a demonstrably incompetent president as many of the de facto powers of a despot that you could wedge into a bill without having the Constitution spontaneously combust in the Archives, well, the Democratic Party was more pissed off at Hugo Chavez.

Glenn Greenwald joins in blasting the Democrats for badly misplaying their hand on this one. And it's hard to argue, unfortunately. It might've seemed smart to stand back and watch the GOP beat themselves up, but the Democrats always seem to forget just how reactionary the Republican party is at the moment.

And finally, Greenwald posts a sort of epilogue, in which Tony Snow bullshits his way through another stupefyingly dishonest rewriting of American history, courtesy of BushCo. The Democrats wouldn't fight, and the press will dutifully print up Snow's comments without pointing out its fundamental dishonesty. Two more years of this and America will be unrecognizable as a democracy.

Snow: "No, as a matter of fact the president has an obligation to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is an obligation that presidents have enacted through signing statements going back to Jefferson. So, while the Supreme Court can be an arbiter of the Constitution, the fact is the President is the one, the only person who, by the Constitution, is given the responsibility to preserve, protect, and defend that document, so it is perfectly consistent with presidential authority under the Constitution itself."

Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist Papers No. 78: "The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts ... It equally proves, that though individual oppression may now and then proceed from the courts of justice, the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter; I mean so long as the judiciary remains truly distinct from both the legislature and the Executive. For I agree, that there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers."

James Madison, in Federalist Papers No. 47: "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."