You must be joking, right?

This scumbag wouldn't pause a moment to keep himself free from prosecution. All that talk about his "legacy" means nothing if his booze stream is threatened. Do you honestly, seriously believe that for a moment this little dodger would stand up and be held accountable?

What a joke. Too bad it's not funny.

T

Bush has made it amply clear that he doesn't regard ANYONE else as a human being. He's a classic sociopath. Giving the finger to the world is exactly the kind of thing he'd enjoy doing.

It's a pity that he'll go to his grave smugly convinced of his own wonderfulness, secure in the "knowledge" that history will pronounce him the greatest President of all time. The real irony is that he has greatly increased the chance that their won't BE a history; our species may not survive the long-term effects of the damage that Bush/Cheney have done.

Any pardon Bush might grant, even to himself, is limited to U.S. prosecutions. All parties pardoned could find themselves liable to prosecution in international courts. It's doubtful that the next president would have the courage to hand the perpetrators over to any external judicial system, but we can dream. Or perhaps the miscreants will be foolish enough to wander into a hostile jurisdiction.

...if, on January 19th next year, Bush issues a blanket pardon of all persons in his administration, inlcudig himself, for anything and everything they might or might not have done.

As for his "legacy", he will most assuredly spend the rest of his life surrounded by synchophants who will make certain that no critiscism of him or his policies ever reach his delicate ears. After all, that's how's spent the last 7.5 years.

I agree. He can protect his cronies from US prosecution, but they could still get hauled off to Den Haag.

Can Bush pardon himself? Or could he be charged and tried?

If he has the guts to do this, I'll bet that its effect is to only excuse those on top -- his buddies. I'll bet it leaves the poor schmucks who were in the trenches on executing his policy to "twist slowly in the wind."

Bush will pardon everyone.

We've always known that.

That's won't have any impact on future international prosecution.

Bush might just decide that this is a pardon better left unsigned.

Yeah, and pigs might fly out of my ass...

You don't pardon the innocent. I'd expect the next Democratic President to declassify enough to hang the word 'torturer' around his neck for all time.

This does remind me of Tucker Carlson's telling story of Bush giggling and putting on a fake terrified voice like the woman he executed in Texas. It makes me wonder if he tortured animals as a child.

http://www.all-creatures.org/aip/nl-3nov2000-frogs.html

«`We were terrible to animals,' recalled [Bush pal Terry] Throckmorton, laughing. A dip behind the Bush borne turned into a small lake after a good rain, and thousands of frogs would come out. `Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them,' Throckmorton said. `Or we'd put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up.'»

As he ponders his historical legacy, Bush might just decide that this is a pardon better left unsigned.

Are you kidding? He'll put his own name first on the list of "patriotic heroes" he "protects" from the "liberals" and people who "hate freedom."

Other commentators have reacted to the story on "Bush's pre-emptive strike on torture" with the reflection that an American pardon is unlikely to have much weight in an international court. It is a moot point that any international court may not have been moved to do much anyway, with or without Bush's intervention, simply because America generally has shown itself complacently disinclined to attend to anything that any international authority might say.

From Kyoto to the Geneva Conventions (impertinently described as "quaint" by Bush administration stooges), America cocks a snook at any court of international opinion -- while at the same time working actively to haul any number of putative miscreants from beyond the safety of their own national borders to stand before an American judge -- and all for the simple reason that America knows that, for now, it can get away with it. In short, it exercises the parochial attitude that no foreign authority is so credible, nor any American so debased, as to admit of the possibility that the latter might ever subject itself to the former.

As the tectonic plates of political and commercial power continue to shift, it will be interesting to see how long America can keep its head buried in the sand on this issue. At some point, the country will have to emerge and re-join the rest of humanity on a more equitable basis. The question is: will this happen early as an act of grace and wisdom, or late and disgracefully as it discovers that its carefree highway of arrogance has run out of road?

If this happens, then every future president, as a final act in office, will demonstrate his / her unlimited capacity for compassion and mercy by declaration of a pardon "to any and all employees, appointed and elected officials, and officers serving under my administration, for any and all crimes or violations which have been or may have been committed, including acts yet to be discovered, henceforth and forevermore."

It will become a great and hallowed national tradition, Pardon Day, a glorious holiday and celebration, marked by fireworks and solemn ceremonial shredding of files, and reformatting of disk drives in agencies and corporations across the land and around the world ...January 19, every 4 years.

"If the President does it, that means that it is not illegal." --R. M. Nixon.

Hail Caesar.

First it was 1984, now it's Ubu Roi.

OK ... can someone do a follow-up here to pin a point down or can a lawyer reading this clear something up? The article says a President can issue a pardon before there are even charges - but surely the pardon has to be specific about who and what is being pardoned?

So the question is: how specific? The President surely can't really just say 'I pardon anyone and everyone involved in [x]? He'd have to name individuals (or at least a class of people - 'anyone working at [x]' and at least the *type* of crime being pardoned or even something dangerously vague like 'any crimes committed during the pursuit of America's enemies'. And his lawyers will want things to be as specific as possible. Yes?

Imagine this scenario: *you* are pardoned by the President for waterboarding suspects. You're *you*, you've never waterboarded anyone in your life.

In that situation, wouldn't you refuse the pardon? You're being accused of a crime, even as you're being pardoned for it.

Otherwise ... couldn't the President just issue a 'pardon' to a political opponent for 'any tax evasion and sex with barnyard animals he may have committed'?

Anyone who accepts the pardon is, basically, admitting their complicity. Aren't they? Can you refuse a pardon?

So ... if President Bush pardons people, he's basically going to hand out a comprehensive list of war criminals and roughly what they did, and in doing so he would have to demonstrate he knew exactly who they are and what they did. Right?