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January 2, 2006
President Bush Will "Construe" the McCain Amendment However He Wants
On Friday, President Bush signed H.R. 2863, the "Department of Defense, Emergency Supplemental Appropriations to Address Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, and Pandemic Influenza Act, 2006."
The President's formal statement upon signing the bill included these words,
The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.
Title X in Division A, is better known as the McCain amendment. This title reads in the first part of its second section (1002),
(a) In General- No person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense or under detention in a Department of Defense facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation.
and its the last part of its third section (1003),
(d) Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Defined- In this section, the term `cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment' means the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.
You can read the whole bill by going to The Library of Congress website and searching for H.R. 2863. Be sure to check that you want to search be bill number. The final version with title X is H.R.2863.ENR.
If I understand the President correctly, he will break this law if he sees fit. And all this time I thought we were a nation of laws not men. But I am learning that I am wrong!
Posted by Duane Smith at January 2, 2006 7:47 PM | Read more on Current Events |
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