President Bush Can Do Anything: Tap Your Phone, Torture You or Even Kill You According to Administration Officials

The Bush Administration and their apologists are up to their old tricks with the “Ticking Bomb” argument to justify their actions to undermine the rule of law in the US. Recently Steven Bradbury, acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel testified before Congress that under several imagined scenarios President Bush could order the assassination of someone even on American soil believed to be a terrorist. They used the argument that if those involved in the September 11 attack were killed before they instigated the terrorist attack, the tragedy would not have happed. Earlier the Bush Administration and their apologists used the same argument to justify torture of detainees. If those who knew about 9/11 were tortured before the attack, it could be avoided. Ignoring the fact that experts from the CIA and military tell us that information gained from torture is notoriously unreliable, these arguments presuppose a prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks on the part of the torturers or assassins. The Bush Administration would have to have known that 9/11 was going to occur to allow them to justify killing or torturing those they believed involved. Otherwise they can say that at any time there may be a ticking bomb about to go off endangering thousands or millions of lives, so killing or torturing anyone they think might be involved is fully justified to avoid a greater tragedy. Following this line of reasoning the US quickly decays into a lawless chaos in which anyone the Administration chooses is tortured or killed and the possibility of an act of terrorism is used as the excuse.

Despotisms of the past have used similar arguments to justify the policies of their totalitarian regimes. Will the US abandon the rule of law and the duty of the Congress to oversee the Executive Branch to prevent the President from becoming one of the tyrants we as a nation have long despised? Remember that our country was formed because the people here ruled by a despotic King George, who had no interest in their rights, revolted to assert their independence and desire to live in a nation guided by the rule of law. Under that King George any American could be locked up for any reason and anyone who disagreed with King George was in danger of losing their liberty or their lives. Let us not abandon the American Dream of our forbearers who fought that King George to win the independent nation ruled by law and not by the whims of another King George.