Last week, the U.S. Justice Department released nine memos drafted during the Bush Administration. These memos laid out the legal justifications for the Bush Administration's war on terror. I went to the Justice Department website and took a look.
What I found was chilling.
In a memo dated October 23, 2001, John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty wrote to Alberto Gonzalez, then counsel to the President and William J. Haynes II, the General Counsel at the Department of Defense what will surely become an albatross around their necks. Entitled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States," this document lays out the warped legal justification for discarding the Constitution and the rule of law because of the events on September 11, 2001.
We conclude that the President has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists within the United States. We further believe that the use of such military force generally is consistent with constitutional standards, and that it need not follow the exact procedures that govern law enforcement operations.
As this memo winds through 38 pages of legal and historical justification for its position, the "9/11" mantra is repeatedly used as justification when their legal rationale becomes weak or non-existent.
What I found morbidly fascinating was the systematic disemboweling of the Constitution and laws designed to prevent the use of military force against the people of the United States, to wit:
We conclude that the PCA {the Posse Comitatus Act] would not apply to the use of Armed Forces by the President domestically to deter and prevent terrorist acts within the United States. Use of the Armed Forces would promote a military, rather than a law enforcement, purpose. In any event, the proposed Presidential deployments are exempt from the PCA, because the President has both constitutional and statutory authorization to use military forces in the present context.
A page later, the writers then assert that the 4th Amendment to the Constitution that provides protection of Americans from unlawful searches and seizures is no longer valid in light of 9/11:
In our view, however well suited the warrant and probable cause requirements may be as applied to criminal investigations or to other law enforcement activities, they are unsuited to the demands of wartime and the military necessity to successfully prosecute a war against an enemy.
And if that weren't enough, the 1st Amendment gets the boot as well:
First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.
On page 28 of the memo, the authors of his memo fully formulate what I call the "Jack Bauer" defense. For those of you not familiar with the television series, "24," the story's hero, Jack Bauer, spends each episode casting aside every constitutional pretense in protecting the world from the apocalypse.
Yea!
Perhaps weary of the 9/11 references peppered throughout the memo to that point, Yoo and Delahunty grab the prose and run.
This memo is an exhausting read. No sooner do they make a gut-wrenching leap of logic to override the rule of law to justify their excesses then they take on yet another provision of the Constitution or legal precedent and toss it aside.
The memo concludes as follows:
The president has both constitutional and statutory authority to use the armed forces in military operations, against terrorists, within the United States. We believe that these operations generally would not be subject to the constraints of the Fourth Amendment, so long as the armed forces are undertaking a military function. Even if the Fourth Amendment were to apply, however, we believe that most military operations would satisfy the Constitution's reasonableness requirement and continue to be lawful.
The implications of this memo amply demonstrate that George Bush and his advisers considered themselves above the law. While many readers may find this memo to be mind numbing in its legal treatment of the real issues, its conclusions scream out the insanity that was the foundation of the Bush Administration.
From their reasoning, if any action, criminal or not, can be labeled "terrorism," then the Constitution can be ignored and any enemy, real or perceived, can be persecuted to the fullest extent.
After spending time reviewing these documents,it is evident to me that these officials need to experience justice first hand.