{"id":3247,"date":"2004-12-21T11:59:30","date_gmt":"2004-12-21T16:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3247.html"},"modified":"2004-12-21T11:59:30","modified_gmt":"2004-12-21T16:59:30","slug":"by-this-logic-bush-opposes-the-rule-of-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/by-this-logic-bush-opposes-the-rule-of-law\/","title":{"rendered":"By this logic, Bush opposes the rule of law"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hate to keep harping on yesterday’s White House press conference<\/a>, but it was a treasure trove of material.<\/p>\n

There was an interesting question from an international reporter, whom I believe works for BBC, who asked whether Bush is concerned whether the multiple torture reports from the last year might “damage America’s reputation as a nation which stands for liberty and justice internationally?”<\/p>\n

I don’t think Bush had fully thought through his response.<\/p>\n

“Look, we are a nation of laws and to the extent that people say, well, America is no longer a nation of laws — that does hurt our reputation. But I think it’s an unfair criticism. As you might remember, our courts have made a ruling, they looked at the jurisdiction, the right of people in Guantanamo to have habeas review, and so we’re now complying with the court’s decisions.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So to follow Bush’s line of reasoning through, the proof that the United States remains a “nation of laws” is a court ruling that rejected Bush’s argument<\/i> over detainees at Guantanamo. That’s not exactly a good sign.<\/p>\n

Left unsaid, of course, was a White House legal memo<\/a>, written by our next attorney general and endorsed by the president, which said Bush had the authority to ignore international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions<\/a> and the federal war-crimes statute<\/a>, whenever he deemed necessary.<\/p>\n

Instead, Bush wants the world to know we’re a “nation of laws” because he’s inclined to follow court rulings that insist he’s wrong. How reassuring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hate to keep harping on yesterday’s White House press conference, but it was a treasure trove of material. There was an interesting question from an international reporter, whom I believe works for BBC, who asked whether Bush is concerned whether the multiple torture reports from the last year might “damage America’s reputation as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}