Bush's push for secret prison legislation

Bush has recently come out with acknowledgement not only that secret CIA prisons exist but he has implied that they sometimes used techniques that "cross the line" of what is currently officially allowed. He has urged Congress to pass legislation that will allow for interrogation that does not fall within the generally accepted understanding of the Geneva convention.

First, I doubt many of us are sympathetic to the kinds of persons that are likely taken to such camps. We've been raised on Dirty Harry and action films where the good guy (or gal) has to break a few eggs to make the omelet of justice. But in these missions impossible, the good guy always is told that "if you are caught, the secretary will disavow knowledge of your existence." The purpose of plausible deniability and unknown knowledge was to hold two or three apparently irreconcilable necessities in tension.

The Geneva convention, I believe, is ultimately not a matter of human decency or morality. Don't fool yourself. It's about tit for tat. It's an agreement that we won't torture yours if you don't torture ours. I think Bush has questioned in the past whether the Geneva convention applies to terrorists, since they do not represent a sovereign nation and are not part of any such agreement. Frankly, we can question whether nations who have no intention of abiding by such rules are a part of the deal. But it remains an important symbol, a statement that a nation is morally upstanding. If America were blatantly to disregard the Geneva convention, we can kiss any trace of pretense to moral status in the world goodbye.

Then there is the "break the eggs" truth. Can we stop terrorists, find terrorists, etc... without someone breaking eggs somewhere? Many would say that we can. Yet I am sympathetic to those who believe that our justice system inappropriately favors the guilty in the face of their victims. Our fears that evil men would sue and otherwise make a mockery of our system make it all too easy to sympathize with those who secretly would work for good by questionable means. These are difficult issues for which I have no real solutions.

The problem with Bush is that he is disavowing nothing--likely because he can't. He is trying to unify the irreconcilable. And of course one suspects that there are two other real reasons to explain what's really going on here:

1. It's going to come out anyway. Bush is headed for a big crisis because the people from these secret interrogation prisons are now visible and they will be heard. They are detestable, but they will be heard. The attempt to pass legislation is an attempt to cover his buttocks in the ensuing thunderstorm that could even lead to impeachment.

2. Second, it is an attempt to polarize Congress into two camps: Republicans as those strong on defense and Democrats as soft on terrorism. Clever to try to leave Congress in this state just before mid-term elections. When the Democrats control Congress, the possibility of impeachment or at the very least an even lamer duck looms large.

Bush's problem is of course that the old shtick just isn't working as well as it used to and even more significant, his own party isn't going along with him completely. He will not be able to paint the Republican/Democrat divide as he had hoped.

So I'm going to be the first to use the word impeachment, at least I haven't heard anyone else use the word. I say this not because I hope Bush is impeached. I don't actually hope for that. But I am suggesting that there is a real possibility that Congress, led by a new Democrat majority, will attempt to impeach President Bush in the last two years of his administration. I've said it before and will say it again. The history books will evaluate President Bush as one of the worst presidents in American history.