When the govt is run by a band of deranged and lawless radicals, aided and abetted by team-playing conservatives, craven journalists and bedwetting Democrats. Glenn Greenwald comments:
More revealing still is Goldsmith's description of how the Bush administration systematically violated one law after the next -- employing tactics that are truly the hallmark of the most lawless third-world dictators:
"In his book, Goldsmith claims that Addington and other top officials treated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the same way they handled other laws they objected to: "They blew through them in secret based on flimsy legal opinions that they guarded closely so no one could question the legal basis for the operations," he writes.
[...]"
They literally decided they would break whatever laws they wanted -- one law after the next, in critical areas -- based on patently baseless memos issued by obedient followers like John Yoo. Not only did they do this in complete secrecy from Congress, they refused even to allow Executive Branch officials who were told to follow orders to see the legal basis for what they were told to do. Addington, whom Goldsmith described as "someone who spoke for and acted with the full backing of the powerful vice president," would simply demand compliance with what Cheney wanted. And anyone who objected was subjected to this (emphasis in original):
"Months later, when Goldsmith tried to question another presidential decision, Addington expressed his views even more pointedly. "If you rule that way," Addington exclaimed in disgust, Goldsmith recalls, "the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your hands." "
While our national media was glorifying the Great Commander-in-Chief and actively disseminating their most manipulative claims and mocking Democrats on the pettiest of grounds (The Serious National Security Grown-ups are in Charge; John Kerry windsurfs! John Edwards loves his hair!), the Bush administration was dismantling the rule of law, systematically violating long-standing statutes and treaties at will. We were ruled by a truly lawless government, while our media institutions and political elite sat by meek and respectful.
Perhaps most infuriating is the fact that, as it turns out, violating these laws in secret was not even necessary -- because Congress was, and still is, more than happy to legalize whatever they wanted to do. Almost immediately after the Supreme Court finally imposed some mild limitations on the President's detention and interrogation powers -- first in Hamdi, then in Hamdan -- Congress, as Goldsmith says, "promptly passed a law that gave him everything he asked for, authorizing many aspects of the military commissions that the Supreme Court had struck down."
And the terrorist bomb about which David Addington was fantasizing in order to get rid of FISA was equally unnecessary, since the Democratic Congress, in the face of the types of threats Goldsmith recounts Addington routinely made -- "the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your hands" -- just eviscerated the crux of FISA's protections by law. Hence, what began as the administration's illegal and secret abuses have become the legally sanctioned policies of the United States.
It is critical to emphasize that Goldsmith -- like James Comey and John Ashcroft -- is no hero. He is a hard-core right-wing ideologue who continues to support many of the administration's most radical positions, including his view that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions does not apply to terrorist suspects (the position rejected by Hamdan). And it was Goldsmith who ultimately approved of the modified (and plainly illegal) NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.
Moreover, Goldsmith explains that he had not even intended to address the NSA surveillance program in his book, but changed his mind once he was served with subpoenas by the FBI in connection with the ongoing criminal investigation to find out who the whistleblower was who alerted the country to this illegality -- an investigation which Goldsmith supports. As Goldsmith says: "I'm not a civil libertarian, and what I did wasn't driven by concerns about civil liberties per se."
Goldsmith is commendable only by comparison to the truly extremist and reprehensible likes of Cheney, Addington, Gonzales and Yoo. He is, by and large, a True Believer in the Bush "War on Terror" and in theories designed to expand substantially executive power. That is what makes his revelations all the more credible, and all the more disturbing. What he is describing is a band of deranged and lawless radicals who, during his tenure, ran our government and who, after they forced him out, continue to do so.
But with little meaningful opposition to any of this -- either in the media or in the Congress -- little attention will be paid to these extraordinary revelations, and our government will continue to be shaped in the image of Dick Cheney and David Addington. Now that they have obtained most of their original wish list from a compliant Congress, just imagine what they are dreaming of, the still new unchecked powers which they believe are only "one bomb away."
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