|
By Max J. Castro
"Dead wrong." That's what the president's own hand-picked committee on intelligence gathering said last week about the information concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration used to bamboozle Americans and attempt to browbeat the world into backing war.
"Dead wrong." That's what Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr. of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta - a conservative judge appointed by the president's own father - just about said last week in a scathing opinion in which he castigated Congress and President Bush for attempting to usurp the authority of the judiciary in the case of Terri Schiavo.
The commission on intelligence gathering, which received only a narrow mandate and scant authority from a president who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into appointing it in the first place, failed to look into the crucial question of how top administration officials used and abused the information given them by the intelligence agencies. Despite the commission's timidity, it could not avoid the inevitable conclusion that intelligence about weapons was systematically distorted so as to support a foregone conclusion. The commission only hints at the political pressures that fostered bias in the intelligence gathering and analysis process:
"It is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom."
Notwithstanding the commission's oblique language, the report is still a damning indictment. As the president of Spain José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero once said, you don't go to war "just in case". Top administration officials had to know the flimsy and contradictory nature of the evidence they sold to the public and the international community as an ironclad case for war indicating a threat so serious as to justify spilling torrents of blood. And, by reporting the fact that today the United States still knows shockingly little about the nuclear programs of potentially hostile countries, the commission undercuts the case for future adventures in regime change.
If the commission seemed intent on limiting political damage to the Bush administration, Judge Birch, on the other hand, did not mince words in exposing the blatantly political motives behind the law that gave the Schiavo parents another chance to go before the federal courts:
"When the fervor of political passions moves the Executive and the Legislative branches to act in ways inimical to basic constitutional principles, it is the duty of the judiciary to intervene."
Judge Birch denounced, in no uncertain terms, the overreaching actions of the president and the Republican-led Congress:
"In resolving the Schiavo controversy, it is my judgment that, despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the Legislative and Executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people - our Constitution."
Noting that intervention in the courts by the executive and legislative branches in the Schiavo case imperils the separation of powers, Birch stated why the judiciary could not passively accept this brazen power grab:
"If sacrifices to the independence of the judiciary are permitted today, precedent is established for the constitutional transgressions of tomorrow."
What links the intelligence fiasco and the Schiavo case is the willingness of this administration and its Republican allies in Congress to argue for and undertake the most extreme and arrogant actions in the absence of credible information and arguments to support them - and in the process demonizing anyone who opposes their schemes. Waging an illegal war and trampling all over the bedrock constitutional principle of separation of powers are variations of a single syndrome, the Bush syndrome.
Whether the subject is global warming, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, stem cell research, social security, or the Schiavo case, the Bush syndrome involves ignoring, twisting, and denying facts and reason in the interest of an extreme right ideology.
The Bush syndrome also means that those who dare question the illegitimate actions that flow from the administration's
|
|
