Bush is simply a man. He is not above the law, and he is not the law. He must be impeached if we are not to lose our system of democracy. The two only future alternatives will be monarchy, or anarchy.

Clank in that last graf.

Glenn, any chance in the near term of you doing an interview with Phillipe Sands, author of "Torture Team?" I heard some of his talk with Terry Gross and was quite impressed, but of course there were a lot of questions she didn't ask that she should have.

"as though the mere fact that the President ordered it has some sort of legal significance, that it made it proper, even though a 25-year-old said that what the President ordered was a felony offense."

I believe that should read, "25-year-old *law*"

A nation is defined not just by its actions but also by the principles it affirms and rejects.--GG

Hard to tell what 'principles' we hold at all. Seems to depend from one situation to the next.

In other related news:

The New York Times reports that John Brennan, the controversial ex-CIA official who abruptly withdrew as Barack Obama's CIA director in November, will become White House director of counterterrorism.

Is Obama a comedian or something?

http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/01/08/the-re-up/#comments

Phillipe Sands on the likelihood of torture investigation of Bush team--surprisingly upbeat (fresh aire yesterday):

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99061358

based on:

http://www.amazon.com/Torture-Team-Rumsfelds-Betrayal-American/dp/0230603904

Sands (a professor of law at University College London, where he directs the Centre for International Courts and Tribunals), points out that Geneva will still apply regardless of what Obama, Bush, or the Congress does. Further, it is not an option, but an obligation, for signators to the Convention to uphold the law. Members of the current administration should be very careful about which countries they chose as destinations in the future.

Glenn, I hope you will submit (if you haven't already) an op-ed to the NYT or the Washington Post (or both) on this subject. The Times and Post keep running op-eds for the apologists and we need more voices who eloquently argue to uphold our principles.

Glenn, it would be very interesting for you to contact Kondracke and ask if those very same acts, "under orders and with patriotism", would be worthy of punishment if they had been unsuccessful and we had been attacked.

...slinging crack on the corner down in Homewood are following orders, so all they need is to do it with patriotism and the Drug War will be over!

As Charles [Krauthammer] said, the country was kept safe ever since 9/11. There has not been an attack.

Tiresome to repeat, but the anthrax attacks were possibly more important to achieving the Bush trainwreck than were the original 9/11 attacks.

There has been no attack since disclosure of the illegal wiretapping, rendition, torture, etc. activities. Does that further defeat the insipid rhetoric of 'these things prevented an attack and are, therefore, justifiable'?

In sentencing the nazi criminals to death he states "if certain acts of violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them....to pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well." Eloquent. However, the wording of the "crimes" was crafted to exclude war crimes clearly committed by the US and it's allies. Admiral Doenitz successfully used the argument that we had done it too and therefore were not crimes. He was acquitted on many of the charges. History is fun! Too bad nobody can remember it.

I mean the IQ kind, like that which Kondracke displays when he writes, "the country was kept safe ever since 9/11. There has not been an attack. These people did what they did under orders and with patriotism. And Obama should make it clear that none of them is going to be held to account for what they did."

Two huge problems with this kind of thinking: He offers zero proof to connect the lack of an attack since 9/11 with anything the administration has done, legal or illegal. How could he? It's all secret. In these circumstances, the government could say anything - and there Kondracke would be, parroting away. Parrots are intelligent, no doubt, but in a bird-brain kind of way, and after all these years of journalistic disaster I have to wonder if a pundit is just some species of parrot.

The second, bigger problem is history and the failure of the pundits - the loudest chatterers of their class - to absorb its meaning. The language is certainly plain enough: "The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him." Exactly how clear does language have to be for a pundit-parrot to comprehend it?

Instead, Kondracke buys fully into Kit Bond's take on Nuremburg - that is, as if it had never happened. If the government tells you to do it, well, then, you do it. Even if, as Bond says, the government is wrong.

This is the kind of thinking intelligent minds produce? Well, my question is: How did such a bunch of literal and moral dummies ever come to run our government and news media? I don't watch them and I don't vote for them, and so I have to turn and ask that question of tens of millions of voters. The buck stops right in their living rooms and voting booths. In raising people like Kondracke, Bond and the rest of these subnormal thinkers to power and prominence, my fellow Americans have badly failed the country, the world, the Constitution, themselves, and their fellow citizens. And in doing so, they've rained untold horror, misery, destruction, and moral disaster on the entire planet.

Although I don't know of any official polls done on public approval of Bush administration's policies on torture and wiretapping, it is pretty clear that politicians' tolerance to these acts is merely a reflection of the people's will. I am willing to bet that the majority, though not all, of Americans probably believe that torture and inhuamne treatment of foreigners are justified and necessary. "Better them and us." It would not be unreasonable to suggest that most American people support the notion that American soliders should not be subject to the same international laws that should be applied to other countries.

Like the "American Lion" Andrew Jackson, who owned slaves, protected slavery, sent Native Americans onto the trail of tears, politicians represent the will of their constituents. In matters that are unpleasant and wrong as well as good and right, democracy reflects the people's collective intentions, or the tyranny of the majority, however you like to put it.