Bush's Trump Card

...His emphasis was on the moral aspect of prisoner treatment...

...History buffs may remember James K. Polk, Rutherford B. Hayes, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Jimmy Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and the incumbent...

...He proposed that its life, due to expire August 26, be extended 18 months...

...Of the 3 7 men elected to the Presidency, the largest single group, 17 of them, had served as governors of their states...

...President Bush named the Commission reluctantly under expertly applied pressure by the families of the 9/11 victims...

...Unless we implement these recommendations, we're more vulnerable to another terrorist attack...

...or when the National Security Council took the rap for the illegal delivery of missiles to Iran that President Reagan authorized...

...There have been some 70 abductions of foreigners in Iraq in recent months...

...Saddam Hussein, facing mass murder charges, seems to find it disconcerting to be facing not an international tribunal like Slobodan Milosevic or Hermann Goring, but a brisk young Iraqi judge ready to deal in businesslike fashion with the dictator and his tricks...

...American military justice is pressing ahead against suspected abuses of Iraqi prisoners...

...At home, the Supreme Court struck a blow for individual rights of citizens and foreigners alike...

...This is not to say that governing experience doesn't count...

...The White House, however, was apparently nervous about implications of its failure that could be drawn from the narrative of missed opportunities...

...Reagan told associates that he couldn't stand seeing Peggy Say, the sister of hostage Terry Anderson, constantly on television denouncing the government for its inaction...

...There is another inherentpower that the President has to answer to—the power of public opinion...

...Other Presidents have also assumed powers not written down in any law or Constitution...

...Not that the United States has always stood resolute in the face of abduction of its citizens...

...President Richard M. Nixon held that when a President broke the law in the interest of national security, it wasn't illegal...

...Someday a matter of the nation's security will be treated as too important to be left to politics...

...In a Washington Posti'ABC poll, 48 per cent of the respondents said Senator Kerry shared their values...

...In World War II, a Presidential commission headed by Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts collected 15,000 pages of testimony, trying to establish that no U.S...

...They predicted that Congress would/would not (check one) act in time to make it an election issue...

...It could go like this: ------people (fill in the blank) were killed today in a roadside ambush/suicide bombing/sniper attack (check one) in Iraq/Pakistan/Chechnya (check one, or name another country...

...We must not allow insurgents, those who will use bombs and kidnapping and beheading, to triumph...

...Undermining a Viable Iraq In Iraq, in addition to the daily grist of car bombings and sniping and hostile militia attacks, the struggling interim regime faces a rash ofkidnappings...

...Yet as these cases show, it is possible...

...At a news conference on June 10, he had stated the issue in legal terms, saying that instructions went out to our people to adhere to law...

...military failure was responsible for the Pearl Harbor disaster...

...or when President Kennedy disclaimed any knowledge of the plots against Cuba's Fidel Castro and South Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem...

...When Dean declared that the President was using terrorism as his trump card, I was inclined to disagree...

...Presidential Deniability The issue of responsibility for prisoner abuse in Iraq continues to dog the military...

...But the prisoner abuse question has now become a moral issue and a political liability...

...Kerry rejected the notion of the President raising the terror level forpolitical reasons...

...But Kennedy conspiracy theories continue to abound to this day...

...In one memo President Bush said he believed he had the authority under the Constitution to deny a prisoner the protection of the Geneva Conventions, but he would decline to exercise that authority at this time...

...Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, having been condemned by both the International Court and his own Supreme Court, announces that he will start immediately to move the protective wall from Palestinian territory/states that he won't budge it an inch (check one...

...It was announced that Bush, from his Texas ranch, would consult his national security team by video conference and move swiftly to determine which of the Commission's proposals could be put into effect by Executive Order...

...I'm not so sure anymore...

...Bush, of course...

...Its chairman, former Governor Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey, cautioned, "We're in danger of just letting things slide...

...Standardizing the News I wake up in the morning, turn on the radio and wait to hear of the latest outburst of violence somewhere...

...It has become customary in recent years to express cynicism about our ability to make powerful people heed the dictates of justice...

...The five Republicans and five Democrats who made up the body had promised to avoid targeting Presidents Bill Clinton and Bush, and generally kept their criticism systemic rather than personal...

...New economic figures out today show continuing improvement/a slowdown in improvement (pick one) according to a Democratic/Republican (pick one) spokesman...

...On the eve of the Democratic convention, Kerry saw an opportunity and seized it...

...Fourteen had been Vice Presidents, including Martin Van Buren, Calvin Coolidge, Theodore Roosevelt, Johnson, Nixon, and George H.W...

...The Iran-contra scandal of the mid-1980s originated with President Reagan's decision to sell missiles to Iran in return for help in securing the release of two of the nine Americans being held hostage by Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon...

...We may be a nation in danger, as Bush says...

...He spoke in response to a book by John W. Dean/Bill Clinton/Richard A. Clarke (pick one...

...Congressional leaders, too, initiated immediate hearings during the Congressional recess...

...said there was no chance Congress could address it before next year...

...In a country living in a state of nerves about violence, a three-judge panel ordered the shifting of a section of its protective barrier because it interfered excessively with the right of Palestinians to move from one place to another...

...There was no evidence it was still under way...

...It is called maintaining Presidential deniability, as when the CIA offered to take responsibility for the disastrous U2 spy flight over the Soviet Union that President Dwight D. Eisenhower had approved...

...The Philippine government announced it would withdraw its 51 soldiers from Iraq earlier than planned in order to gain the release of one Filipino...

...In early August there were a dozen in one week...

...Lessons for the Powerful In war, it has been said, truth is the first casualty...

...The same with the report of the Milton Eisenhower Commission on the causes and prevention of violence, named by President Johnson after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr...

...The headlines in the Wall Street Journal told the effect of these revelations: "Security Becomes Top Campaign Issue...

...Finally, Vice President Cheney, in a moment of anger, called Senator Edwards a------(fill in the blank, if you dare...

...Conservative Republicans announced today that they would not give up their fight for a constitutional ban on samesex marriages...

...Bush Seizes Spotlight...

...The President, who only a few days before had sounded as though there was no reason for haste, now said he wanted the Commission recommendations on a fast track...

...Then, maybe the latest exchange of incivilities between Bush and Kerry...

...But, as inquiry commissions of the past have shown, we can never underestimate the ability of a politician to avoid taking action...

...And Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has not tried to exercise any "inherent power" to override the Court...

...Most of the AI Qaeda surveillance mentioned was conducted three or four years before September 11,2001...

...Visible success obviously puts a premium on further abductions...

...Powell praised the resoluteness of Bulgaria in the face of the beheading of two of its citizens...

...He had all along supported the Commission and now he reached for a headline...

...They included Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, James A. Garfield, and Eisenhower...

...But apparently not in danger imminent enough to warrant an orange alert that sent Citigroup and the International Monetary Fund into a tizzy...

...Democracy is hard," the secretary said...

...and Robert F. Kennedy...

...The same can be said of justice...

...But the next largest group, 10, were military leaders with government experience of a rather specialized sort...

...An Egyptian diplomat hopingto train Iraqi police was released with a warning to the Egyptian government to stay out of Iraq...

...In response to urban disorder in the late 1960s, Johnson named a commission headed by former Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois, which found America moving toward "two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal...

...Former Presidential wannabe Howard Dean said every time something happened that was not good for the President, he would play that trump card...

...On whether torture of prisoners is ever acceptable, 63 per cent said no and 35 per cent yes...

...The Kerry campaign, adopting a favorite Republican theme, then accused Bush of "flip-flopping...

...Computer records recited in chilling detail everything from how to enter the buildings to what was the best explosive to use...

...Then there is Israel, where another Supreme Court has been heard from...

...The updated theory is that if, in the conduct of the war on terrorism, the President has to violate a treaty in order to put the squeeze on prisoners, he has the inherent right to do so...

...But the Administration has now backed away from any idea of introducing tougher interrogation methods...

...Nevertheless, the 9/11 report has taken its place in the annals of panels set up to allay anger and anxiety following a national tragedy...

...The net effect of this exercise in selective document releases is to suggest that however punitive Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld may be, Presidential deniability is maintained...

...Later, the White House said there was more recent information...

...In a series of complicated opinions involving wartime detainees, the Court repudiated the Bush Administration's claim to possess an inherent power to dispose of these captives as it saw fit...

...Belatedly, the White House swung into action to meet the Democratic threat...

...A Jordanian construction company used by the American military announced it would comply with kidnappers' demands to stop working in Iraq as a condition for the release of two of its truck drivers...

...Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, on a tour of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, deplored the Philippine decision, saying it would not help Philippine relations with the United States...

...He was appearing with his top security aides in the Rose Garden on August 2 to roll out his version of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations for reforming the intelligence community...

...Among the crucial Independents, Kerry had a 17-point lead over the President...

...It may be that too much is made of experience as a qualification for the White House...

...Now, after a massive but selective release of classified memos exchanged among the Defense, State and Justice Departments and the White House as they bickered over the permissible limits of prisoner interrogation, President Bush has proclaimed that he would never condone torture because "the values of this country are such that torture is not part of our soul and our being...

...Some of the victims were beheaded, providing grisly scenes for Arab television...

...Nor was there assurance to be had from the Administration's reaction to the unanimous Commission report issued July 22, with its thoughtful conclusions on where the government went wrong in meeting the terrorist threat...

...The Democrats were ready with a response that President Bush had no national experience when he came to Washington...

...And he promised if elected to summon a summit conference with Congress to start implementing the recommendations for a national intelligence director and a counterterrorism center...

...Seven military police officers already face charges, and investigations are in progress in the deaths of at least 40 detainees...

...46 per cent said Bush...

...The Democratic National Convention had given Senator John Kerry a modest bump in some opinion polls, but Bush still rated higher than his opponent when it came to handling terrorism...

...Democracy is dangerous...

...The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel took the unusual step of disavowing an earlier department opinion which held that torturing terrorism suspects might be legally defensible...

...President Bush has again denied that his Administration cooked the intelligence books to justify the invasion of Iraq...

...So the President initially received the report with a cool promise that it would be studied...

...But the Kemer Commission's proposals for massive investment in the inner city were soon gathering dust...

...Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman asserted wartime powers to end crippling strikes...

...But the rest of the story came without a press release...

...An Alert Shifts Focus to War on Terrorism...

...Well-informed sources say that Secretary of State Powell will/will not (pick one) resign atthe end of President Bush's current term...

...At the same time, the White House released a February 2002 memo signed by Bush that spoke of treating prisoners humanely...

...Their appeal was an ability to inspire confidence...

...But apparently not this year...

...I haven't suggested that, and I won't suggest that," he said emphatically...

...111...

...The news has a sameness about it that makes me wonder if we couldn't do with a standard newscast, leaving only the details to be filled in...

...The increasing abductions of foreigners who are needed to create a viable Iraq have assumed the proportions of a serious challenge...

...President Reagan, who illegally sold missiles to Iran and sent arms to Nicaraguan rebels, noted that President Abraham Lincoln acted outside the Constitution when he freed the slaves, when he drafted troops, and when he blockaded Southern ports...

...The stunning report of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission has assigned responsibility evenhandedly to two Administrations for failing to protect Americans and called for broad intelligence community reforms...

...If there was any doubt about the imminence of the danger the Administration had to deal with, one had only to note what National Security Director Tom Ridge had revealed the day before the Rose Garden ceremony...

...This summer, though, justice is being pursued robustly from Baghdad to Washington...

...House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R...

...I was left thinking about this by a letter in the Washington Post...

...If the voters had chosen predominantly on the basis of experience, though, we might have missed Truman, a failed haberdasher tapped for a political career by the Kansas City political machine, and Lincoln, a state legislator, one-term Congressman and, if you please, a trial lawyer, like John Edwards...

...The kidnappings have had their effect...

...Ridge said he was raising the alert level to orange after the discovery of detailed intelligence showing that AI Qaeda operatives had been plotting for years to blow up specific financial institutions in New York, Newark and Washington...

...It noted that if Presidents were chosen on the basis of experience, then the savvy Nixon would surely have beaten the callow JFK in 1960...

...There are still lessons for the powerful to learn about the rule of law, even in the U.S...

...Chief Justice Earl Warren headed a commission named by President Lyndon B. Johnson seeking to assure a troubled nation that President John F. Kennedy was not the victim of some conspiracy...

...It was Sandra Day O'Connor, the pivotal member of the Court, who tersely summed up the proceedings, saying the Constitution does not grant the President a blank check...

...Overrating Experience When Senator John Kerry chose Senator John Edwards as his running mate, the Republican National Committee was ready with a 26-page document stressing Edwards' lack of experience...