So much for leaving Iraq.
As you probably already know, Bush is currently negotiating a long-term agreement with Iraq’s president for long-term basing of our troops in that country. And he’s stated he doesn’t consider this a treaty, so he doesn’t need to have the Senate ratify it.
Then, in a Monday signing statement, he asserted that he wasn’t bound by a provision in the latest defense spending bill that forbids spending taxpayers’ money to establish a permanent base in Iraq or to exercise US control of Iraq’s oil resources.
Bush also signing-statemented away a provision that strengthened protection for whisteblowers and a section of the bill that established an independent, bipartisan commission investigating allegations of waste, mismanagement and excessive force by contractors.
Since his statements avoid any use of logic or Constitutional argument beyond asserting that these sections of the bill infringe on his presidential authority, that may be all there is to it: In his view of the Constitution, Congress is supposed to rubber stamp whatever the Glorious Supreme Leader decrees, and anything else exceeds their authority.
Or it could mean that Bush wants permanent bases, and doesn’t want anyone actually investigating the millions that have been embezzled or wasted by contractors during the Iraq War.
My guess: Both.
For a lame-duck president, it’s impressive how much damage Bush can continue to do to our system of government (helped by Congress’ reluctance to challenge him in any way). It makes it funny how many writers (Ron Hart in his recent column, for instance) blast Senator Clinton for being “ruthless” while giving the guy who advocates torture, imprisonment without trial or charges and claims his office has absolute power isn’t tagged the same.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 7:31 am and is filed under Politics, War/military. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.