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In fact, this Administration has displayed a strong commitment to the rule of law, with all that entails and I suspect, and I admit it is a suspicion tinged with hope, that the next Administration will maintain far more of this Administration's legal architecture than the intemperate rhetoric in some quarters would seem to suggest.
— M.B. Mukasey, prepared remarks
Interestingly enough, the Nazis also had a strong commitment to the rule of law. This is why extermination camps were set up outside of Germany proper — because they were against the law in Germany. In much the same way, the Bush administration has set up its internment camps and torture facilities outside the US because they would be against the law in the US.
Like the Nazis, the Bush administration sought legal advice on how to make the most heinous crimes somehow fall within the law. Now we hear that torture, indefinite detention on the say-so of the executive, secret prisons, and "extraordinary" (i.e., outside the niceties of the legal system) rendition for indefinite extralegal detention and torture are just "policy differences" and should not be criminalized. These things were criminalized long before the current policies that implemented them.
