Newest Tool In The White House Shed: Blackmail

I'm going to ask you to perform a tall order. But I think it will end up being instructive.

I'm going to ask you to take the President at his word. Because if you do so, and you logically piece out his machinations in the debate over military commissions, you have to crown him one of the most impudent, treacherous, vile sould ever to hold the office.

So join me on this thought experiment, will you?

The President said today, as he's said on numerous occasions, that the CIA detainee program (and we've truly gone down Euphemism Lane when a practice of torturing people, hiding them in secret prisons off the books, and trying them in kangaroo courts with evidence obtained through that torture which they cannot see is a "program") for high-value targets has yielded vital information in the war on terror. I would tend to question the value of that information, but for this moment, let's just take the President at his word. If you believe that, you believe that the program itself is indeed vital to our homeland security.

This is what the President said today about that program.

Members of the Central Intelligence Agency who have been questioning terrorist suspects — and extracting vital information in the process — cannot be expected to continue their efforts without clarification, Mr. Bush argued during a question-answer session that lasted nearly an hour.

“They don’t want to be tried as war criminals,” Mr. Bush said. “They expect our government to give them clarity about what is right and what is wrong.”

He went on to essentially say that if he did not get his way on the military commissions bill, he would shut down the CIA program. Which means that he is threatening to stop what he terms A SUCCESSFUL AND VITAL SECURITY PROGRAM is he doesn't get what he wants.

In other words, the President is blackmailing the American people, and will DELIBERATELY make us less safe if he doesn't get his way.

Can this be true? Can he seriously hold Americans in such contempt that he'd rather endanger them than compromise? Well, I actually don't think so. That's the logical outcome of his threat, but you have to accept all his dubious premises in order to think so. For one, you have to believe that the CIA program is vital. You have to think it's necessary for us to torture detainees to save America. You have to think it's crucial for us to lose our humanity to save our humanity. You have to think that torture provides valuable informaiton.

I don't believe any of that. Therefore I believe undermining our moral standing both debases ourselves and our global stature, and we ought to bring military commissions in line with our own ideals. That's why I think this program is NOT vital. It wouldn't be offered up as blackmail if it was so important.

But the President does believe his CIA program is legal and also vital, at least in public statements. Yet he would jeopardize it because of nothing but disagreement.

And so we have a case which we often have when dealing with this President. He's either a vile, heartless scoundrel who would rather put America at risk than back down, or he's simply lying about how important the CIA detainee program really is. Either way, it's unconscionable for a President of the United States to play politics with national security in this manner.

As Jonathan Turley just put it on "Countdown," this issue is a "redefining" moment in American history. We had our defining moment in 1787 when we established a Constitution on the ideals of liberty and individual freedom. Codifying torture, allowing the US justice system to accept evidence gained through torture, denying defendants to view the evidence against them, would redefine our commitment to the ideas we fought a Revolutionary War to achieve, and continued to fight battles on our own soil and all over the globe to maintain.

It's far far worse to have a President who deems it fit, indeed necessary, to blackmail the American people into accepting his radical aggrandizement of executive power.

(P.S. Redhatman had a similar take on the initial move of high-value detainees to Guantanamo last week, but I think this latest incident is even more brazen).