"... the power to wage war, [is] not a license to do unnecessary and dictatorial things in the name of the war power.”

Progreso Weekly: "Above the law? | Bush: “I am the law” | By Max J. Castro

“L’etat, c’est moi.” I am the State:” That’s what the 17th century French monarch, Louis XIV (1638-1715), told the Parliament of Paris after some of its members dared to question funding for the war against Spain."
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Bush’s legal enablers have been a busy and shameless bunch. International law regarding the justification for war? No problem, go to the UN Security Council to seek authorization. And, if the Council declines to approve war? Invade anyway and invoke violations of Security Council resolutions as the legal basis for military action.

The Geneva Conventions? No sweat: Its provisions have been rendered “quaint” by the “war on terror.” Then coin a new category, label prisoners in this war “enemy combatants,” and argue that for them no rules apply and anything goes.

The Convention Against Torture? Taking candy from a baby: Claim that it only applies to interrogations conducted in the United States. Then send them to other countries for the third degree. Just in case, redefine the terms. Torture is what we say it is; if they don’t have that near-death experience, if they don’t see the white light, it isn’t torture. And, even if they die under torture, understand that was legal too because if the Commander-Chief says it is legal, then it is.

No: With Bush another week always means a new and more disturbing revelation. Until now the administration’s numerous transgressions have involved violations of international law. International law? The Administration has had substantial success in selling the American people on the idea that international law is irrelevant at best and, at worst, an obnoxious interference with U.S. sovereignty. Meanwhile, on the domestic front, the President has relied on a compliant Congress and a deferential judiciary to legitimize bending the laws and the Constitution, manly through the Patriot Act.

Now comes news of a new entry in the annals of the Bush administration’s illegalities, a secret program to spy on Americans in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The New York Times revealed last week that in 2002 Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor international calls involving Americans located on U.S. soil. Congress, awakened from its slumber by the administration’s brazen overreaching, put the brakes on the reauthorization of the Patriot Act.
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Fifty years ago, in the wake of the prolonged detainment of Japanese Americans, Eugene Rostow of Yale Law School broke with the war-induced atmosphere of hysteria and complicity that characterized the attitude of too many lawyers, intellectuals and ordinary citizens when he wrote: “The war power is the power to wage war successfully…But it is the power to wage war, not a license to do unnecessary and dictatorial things in the name of the war power.” ...