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I've read many comments from family members, neighbors and friends of a person suspected of a major crime "But he'd NEVER do anything like that!"
Ms. Rice's comments today echo the same symptoms of disbelief and hero worship about her ex-boss:
Rice: Bush wouldn't approve illegal interrogations - CNN.com: ""
"He was also very clear that we would do nothing -- nothing -- that was against the law or against our obligations internationally"
"was only willing to authorize policies that were legal in order to protect the country"
"Even under those most difficult circumstances, the president was not prepared to do something illegal."
(Via CNN.)
Has she forgotten the illegal wiretaps by the NSA which President Bush authorized? Despite an almost white-wash by Congress, the facts were clear:
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1980 allowed the President to spy without a warrant for up to a year, UNLESS someone in the U. S. legally was involved. If someone from the U. S. was involved in the wiretap, the Feds had three days to obtain a warrant from a secret court. In 26 years, the secret FISA courts approved 22,985 of the 22,990 warrant applications.
But that wasn't good enough for Ex-President Bush. He chose to go outside of the law and order the NSA to start secretly intercepting cell phone and other phone conversations without a warrant and against folks who would certainly cause the wiretap to require a FISA search warrant.
Even Congress admits that the President violated the law, through their response to give the president more power yet tighten the controls. If he hadn't broken the law, then the changes in 2006, 2007 and 2008 at the height of the bad publicity wouldn't have been needed.
So President Bush certainly broke the law in that case, why should we believe that he was incapable of breaking the law in regard to torture?
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