Attorney General John Ashcroft would like to think that his personal opinion represents the law of the land.
Our Constitution says otherwise.
When testifying before Congress this week, Ashcroft refused to turn over a 2002 Justice Department policy memo that outlines the degree to which military interrogators can inflict extreme psychological and physical pain on a suspect. He didn’t refuse to turn over the memo because of executive privilege, instead saying, “I believe it is essential to the operation of the executive branch that the president have the opportunity to get information from the attorney general that is confidential.”
Fine, but when Congress wants to see a memo, and you refuse because you don’t think you should hand it over, that’s contempt of Congress.
This puzzling – and seemingly illegal – action by the Justice Department puts doubt on the administration’s line that those “bad apples” responsible for abuses like those that occurred at an Iraqi prison acted alone and without orders. Coupled with its reluctance to release other possibly incriminating documents, and the recent leak of a Defense Department memo that proscribes a way to avoid prosecution if the administration disobeyed the Geneva Conventions and federal anti-torture statutes, a very different picture of the Bush administration’s approach to torture emerges.
If the administration isn’t really authorizing torture and seeking a way to immunize itself from the law, then it should be more than willing to hand over that memo, and any others that prove just that. But the current opacity of this administration doesn’t help the American people believe that torture isn’t being authorized.
Legally authorized torture would be a disturbing first for America, but so was Sept. 11, 2001, so abuses on al-Qaida detainees at Guantanamo Bay are a different discussion. The more pressing question is: Are we authorizing the torture of Iraqi prisoners, innocent or not, who had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks and are protected by the Geneva Conventions? Are we setting a precedent for the use of torture even on American citizens suspected of terror activities?
Furthermore, if the administration is pursuing an agenda that authorizes torture in the interest of national security, it shouldn’t do it via secret working groups and Pentagon memos that find ways, however wrong they may be, around the laws. The Executive Branch executes the laws, and has no constitutional power to claim itself superior to the law. Introducing a bill into Congress is the constitutional way to advance a pro-torture agenda, and judging by the current congressional make-up, a bill with the right language would stand a good chance of passing.
The administration should be transparent about issues such as torture. Its recent actions have proven it is anything but.
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