NYT: President's efforts...warped the war on terror

[Rose Siding]

Editorial
The Real Agenda
It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration’s response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power.

Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints......
One result has been a frayed democratic fabric in a country founded on a constitutional system of checks and balances. Another has been a less effective war on terror.
...
The hearings were a bizarre spectacle in which the top military lawyers — who had been elbowed aside when the procedures at Guantánamo were established — endorsed the idea that the prisoners were covered by the Geneva Convention protections. Meanwhile, administration officials and obedient Republican lawmakers offered a lot of silly talk about not coddling the masterminds of terror.
...
The president’s constant efforts to assert his power to act without consent or consultation has warped the war on terror....
To a disturbing degree, the horror of 9/11 became an excuse to take up this cause behind the shield of Americans’ deep insecurity. The results have been devastating. Americans’ civil liberties have been trampled. The nation’s image as a champion of human rights has been gravely harmed. Prisoners have been abused, tortured and even killed at the prisons we know about, while other prisons operate in secret. American agents “disappear” people, some entirely innocent, and send them off to torture chambers in distant lands. Hundreds of innocent men have been jailed at Guantánamo Bay without charges or rudimentary rights. And Congress has shirked its duty to correct this out of fear of being painted as pro-terrorist at election time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/opinion/16sun1.html?ei=5090&en=d38dc3c60f31985e&ex=1310702400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

[eleny]

1. Hot Damned Diggity

[shance]

2. The War on Terror is the War on Truth. It's a lie and their actions are

intentionally designed to strip the rights of all American citizens.

Wake up America.

[thefuzz811]

3. They've used it to strip rights and give money to their friends.

The biggest expression that describes this is the pot calling the kettle black. They do all of this in the name of freedom, while they suppress populations and support death squads. They do it in the name of democracy, while they propagate voter fraud to win elections. The war on terror is fabricated. They want us to fear them, so they can control us and the population under their boot heel.