And given that the president of the United States is apparently suffering from it, doesn’t that make him unfit for office?
US President George W Bush has said he has “no recollection” of the existence of video tapes of CIA interrogations and the plan to destroy them.
The CIA says it wiped two tapes of interrogations of al-Qaeda suspects to protect the identities of its agents.
But human rights groups accuse it of destroying evidence of practices that may be tantamount to torture.
And most importantly: if he is unfit for office, isn’t it time to remove him and all his administration too, for aiding and abetting a criminally negligent dictator?
Oh, you think I’m exaggerating when I call him a dictator? Exaggerate THIS:
1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.
2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.
3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.
In a nutshell, these three Bush administration legal propositions boil down to this:
1. “I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them.”
2. “I get to determine what my own powers are.”
3. “The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.”
And just think, this is the same amnesiac election-stealer who has the chutzpah to lecture Chavecito on democracy. Even though all the evidence is that Venezuela is doing rather well on the democratic front, particularly with Chavecito at the helm.
But I digress. In DubyaLand, impeachment is still off the table, even with all this mounting evidence of a crying need for that very democratic remedy.
Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?
To believe Congress was informed and aware of these tapes, but the President of the United States wasn’t is not in the realm of posibilities. This is just as believable as Bush saying he had no idea what was in an NIE days before it is released. Presidents are briefed daily on the same intelligence that is used to form them.
“2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.”
That sounds mighty familiar. “When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.”– Richard M. Nixon
I smell Cheney all over this opinion. He has wanted to restore the powers that Nixon lost ever since Nixon left office.
Time to watch this again: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/cheney/