Yellow Dog

Now that our government has sunk to new lows as it tries to "compromise" on torture (talk about moral relativism), it's worth asking why Bush wants to change the long-standing Geneva Conventions, for which--for the past 75 years--no one seemed to question the statutes' vagueness.

But this Chicago Sun-Times story gets it right. It's not about the vague language of the statute; it's all about the usual Bush administration politics of CYA (cover your ass):

Now, President Bush, to avoid a similar public outcry, is quietly trying to pardon himself of any crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of U.S. detainees.

The ''pardon'' is buried in Bush's proposed legislation to create a new kind of military tribunal for cases involving top al-Qaida operatives. The ''pardon'' provision has nothing to do with the tribunals. Instead, it guts the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal law that makes it a crime, in some cases punishable by death, to mistreat detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and makes the new, weaker terms of the War Crimes Act retroactive to 9/11.

Creating immunity retroactively for violating the law sets a terrible precedent. The president takes an oath of office to uphold the Constitution; that document requires him to obey the laws, not violate them. A president who knowingly and deliberately violates U.S. criminal laws should not be able to use stealth tactics to immunize himself from liability, and Congress should not go along.

Bush seeks immunity for violating War Crimes Act