Trusting the President to do the right thing

TONY SNOW: Helen, you've had your hand up, sorry.
Q: I wanted to talk about the bill the President will sign tomorrow.
MR. SNOW: Yes.
Q: It makes him a final arbiter on torture.
MR. SNOW: Right.
-- White House Press Briefing, 16 October 2006

Here is a partial list of interrogation techniques that have already been used under the Bush Administration. They include electrical torture, Palestinian hanging, severe beatings and sexual assault. Here is a list of cases in which those so-called interrogation techniques have resulted in a death.

These are the things that the President has already done, either directly through U.S. agents, or indirectly through the rendition programme, using allies as torturers-by-proxy for the United States.

If this is what Bush was willing to do before the Act, before he had ensured that the laws against what he was doing are virtually unenforceable, what do you think he will be willing to do now?

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Further reading:

• ACLU Statement, 17 Oct 2006, President Bush Signs Un-American Military Commissions Act, ACLU Says New Law Undermines Due Process and the Rule of Law