Sunday, May 09, 2004

IMPEACHABLE?
NEWSWEEK: In Recent Months, Some Senior Members of Congress Given Highly Classified Briefings Indicating U.S. Interrogators Not Necessarily 'Going to Stick With The Geneva Convention'

One American intelligence officer admitted as much, telling Newsweek: "The U.S. government and military capitalizes on the dubious status [as sovereign states] of Afghanistan, Diego Garcia, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and aircraft carriers, to avoid certain legal questions about rough interrogations. Whatever humanitarian pronouncements a state such as ours may make about torture, states don't perform interrogations, individual people do. What's going to stop an impatient soldier, in a supralegal location, from whacking one nameless, dehumanized shopkeeper among many?"

International treaties, such as the Geneva Conventions, which are ratified by the U.S. Congress effectively become U.S. law. If President Bush permitted the violation of the Conventions then that seems to me a pretty straightforward case for impeachment and removal.

It seems likely that, by continuing to stand by Rumsfeld, even in the face of mounting conservative criticism, Bush will draw criticism to himself rather than stemming the criticism of Rumsfeld.

posted by Matt Duss @ 2:39 PM