Just A Few Rogue Cabinet Members

I think there is justification for the impeachment of George Bush, and I don't mean the lies that lead to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. (There's just enough vagueness there to give him an out.) Instead, impeachment is clearly warranted on two counts: first, the Administration's willfull violation of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, which forbids spying on U.S. citizens except under strict court-supervised requirements which Bush chose to ignore; and more importantly by the Administration's eager approval of the use of torture of suspected terrorists and enemy combatants at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, in clear violation of international law.

On the one hand, the Administration says it doesn't torture, while admittedly engaging in extreme coercive tactics such as waterboarding that it insists don't qualify as "torture" but which numerous respected authorities, including the U.S. Army itself, say are indeed torture. (The U.S. Army Field Manual, in fact, expressly forbids the use of many of the interrogation tactics which the Bush Administration condones.) But on the other hand, when graphic examples of blatant torture, such as the infamous Abu Ghraib photos, do surface, the Administration dismisses the scandal as the work of just a few low-level "rogue soldiers."

Not that I ever believed those claims, of course. It's never been just rogue soldiers acting on their own. The self-serving justifications for torture set forth by high-level Administration advisers, from Antonio Gonzales to John Yoo, have already been public knowledge for some time. And now comes this:

ABC News reported tonight that President Bush’s most senior and trusted advisers met in “dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House” beginning in 2002 to approve the use of “combined” interrogation techniques (the joint use of harsh interrogation techniques). Those tactics included whether detainees “would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.”

Members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee — Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and John Ashcroft — approved the use of these techniques. “Sources said that at each discussion, all the Principals present approved.”

Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Tenet, Ashcroft...proof of the Administration's explicit approval of the reprehensible practice of torture just keeps inching higher, and is now just one step from the top. It's only a matter of time before proof of Bush's approval finally surfaces.

If Bush had several years remaining on his term, instead of just nine months, and if the Democrats in Congress had more spine than they've shown during the past seven years (hell, make that ANY spine), I'd fully expect impeachment. But, sadly, I suspect he'll just be allowed to quietly leave office and go off on his merry way.