CNN: The Nixon-Bush doctrine

[PhilipShore]

CNN
POLITICS
The Nixon-Bush doctrine
February 8, 2006

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/07/morton.power/

President Lincoln abolished habeas corpus (the right to a trial) during the Civil War -- clearly unconstitutional, but he did it. President Franklin Roosevelt imprisoned Japanese-Americans -- U.S. citizens -- in concentration camps during World War II -- clearly unconstitutional, but he did it.

Richard Nixon probably put the case most clearly in an interview with David Frost back in 1977.

Frost: "So ... what ... you're saying is that there are certain situations ... where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal."

Nixon: "Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal."

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. And the court told Lincoln that what he did was illegal

and he obeyed the courts. He also didn't suspend habeas corpus all over the nation, only in MD. I can't imagine the Chimp obeying a direct SCOTUS order about stopping wiretapping or limiting his snooping, can you?

[wordpix]

8. can we imagine SCOTUS directing Chimp to do or stop doing anything??

[rodeodance]

10. oh, i think he will have to. Our communications-ie. the NET is too broad

now for him NOT too.

[yurbud]

13. and Lincoln had a real war at home--not a real war of aggression

overseas and a phony propaganda boogeyman war at home.

[makeanoise22]

2. Another thing too....

A lot of the same people that worked under Nixon/Ford; Rumsfield, Cheney, Pearle, Wolfowitz...
Now work in the Bush Administration.

Not a lot of people know that, but hey if it worked for NIXON (NOT!) then it works for BUSH (remains to be seen)

so it's not surprise to me that what happened under Nixon/Ford, is happening again with Bush...

[rodeodance]

3. "When a duty to protect supercedes a duty to abide by the law" sub-title

[rodeodance]

4. and the opening paragraph is chilling:

Presidents, in wartime, tend to think they're above the law; commanders-in-chief who rule absolutely.

[rodeodance]

5. nominate

[fasttense]

6. But they were fighting real wars (except Nixon)

What war do we have? Vietnam was called a "Conflict". It was never declared and Nixon was illegally spying on American citizens without warrants so that he could fight what exactly? Vietnam had never attacked us. It was not a war as this terrorist threat is not a war. Iraq has never attacked American land. We are labeling a fight against a group of border-less criminals a war.

We Americans need to face the fact that terrorism will always be with us. We need to get out of our hidey-holes and cellars and quit being such cowards. We need to stand up and face the danger and move on to build a free Nation. I've never seen such cowards as I have seen in the last few months. Ever since the NYT reported on bush spying on American citizens without warrants, republicans and conservatives have been going around saying we need to give up our 4th Amendment rights to protect us from terrorists. I say we stand up and face our fears, look terrorism in the face and say we are not going to give up our rights as Americans just because we have a group of criminals running around. I'm not giving up any freedoms just because some terrorist decides to target my country. This is not the way to fight them.

[rodeodance]

7. I forgot; you can't answer any questions that might be relevant." (Leahy)

.......Some in the hearing noted that.

"There is no check and balance," Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-South Carolina, said, under the administration's theory, and of course he's right; there isn't.

Tommy Lynch, director of a project on criminal justice sponsored by CATO, a libertarian think tank, said, "the overriding issue ... is the stance of the administration that they're going to decide in secrecy which laws they're going to follow and which laws they can bypass." Just so.

Toward the end of the hearing, Gonzales simply refused to answer some questions, prompting Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, to say, "I forgot; you can't answer any questions that might be relevant."

[rodeodance]

9. KICKYPOO

[rodeodance]

11. The bush-Gonzales pair has been effecive in sticking to the message.

..President George W. Bush, commander in chief in the war against terror, is squarely in the Nixon camp. He has asserted his right to hold American citizens indefinitely without charging them with any crime if he labels them "enemy combatants." He holds detainees of other nationalities at Guantanamo, some with access to lawyers, some not.

His attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, has referred to the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war as "quaint." Bush has asserted America's right to torture prisoners. He has asserted its right to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens because they might be talking to terrorists.

Gonzales was on Capitol Hill this week, defending that last presidential power before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Gonzales said he was astonished that anyone would question this.

"Our enemy is listening, shaking their heads in amazement that anyone would imperil such a sensitive program," he said.

[rodeodance]

12. made worse by fact that people have excepted that the war on terror is

eternal.


......This is all made worse by the fact that the war on terror is probably eternal. It's not a philosophy; it's a tactic, used by whichever side doesn't have the big army, the jet fighters, and so on.

The Jews used terror when they were fighting to establish Israel; Menachem Begin, later prime minister, blew up a hotel in Jerusalem.

Would Mr. Bush have opposed terror then? Or now in Chechnya or Northern Ireland, or Kashmir? It's a pretty good bet it always will be in use somewhere, simply because it's how you resist if you don't have lots of troops and guns.

So is the all-powerful commander in chief the wave of the future?

[yurbud]

14. this kind of defense will backfire--people will compare Bush to other

presidents and if they haven't figured it out already, they'll realize he is the worst president in our history, and there isn't even a distant second.