Saturday, March 08, 2008

There's still time to impeach him

In this morning's radio address explaining his veto of a bill that would ban waterboarding and other "alternative interrogation techniques" that other countries consider to be torture, George Bush said --

The bill Congress sent me would not simply ban one particular interrogation method, as some have implied. Instead, it would eliminate all the alternative procedures we've developed to question the world's most dangerous and violent terrorists. This would end an effective program that Congress authorized just over a year ago.

However, Bush also said that the program has been in place since soon after 9/11, well before the supposed Congressional authorization in 2006. By his own logic, the program was therefore operating without Congressional authorization for 5 years. One might think that the program was therefore illegal. But in Bush's mind, it's that Congress has no power to regulate his conduct of "war" in the first place. It's thus amazing that he even bothered to veto the bill, since even had he signed it, he has claimed the power to ignore it.

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