THE COSTS OF THE BUSH-CHENEY CHEAP, FEEL-GOOD ERA ON SECURITY ARE COMING HOME
Senators Graham and McCain write at length about the mess that Bush-Cheney dumped on the next guy: hundreds (?) of detainees in a limbo created by a lack of prosecutorial discipline.
If Senators McCain and Graham come to grips with that, the more they might realize that stomping up-and-down about war powers didn't help Bush-Cheney and it won't help them (or anyone).
It's typical Bush-era "thinking": 'hope for the best and don't plan for the rest'; all benefits, no costs (that we can't push off to others or blame on the Democrats); etc., etc.As CQ Politics points out, the courts have been rightly uneasy about an Executive declaring a non-juridical "war" with people who it intended to treat as "non-warriors".
CAUGHT IN THE IDEOLOGICAL, LEGAL EDDIES OF THE BUSH ERA
If there were delicate balances and new methods to be tried out, hopes for them were dashed by the unidimensional arrogance with which Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld asserted Article 2 powers, perhaps, creating a need, today, to somehow 'transition' to a more far-sighted schema, even if there are short-term costs that are significant.
Scuttling the hopes for practical people to wrestle with real-world problems is the Bush-Cheney penchant for secrecy. The balances that were to be struck between secrecy and perceived fairness got dashed when secrecy was used to hide interrogation practices that were unsupportable, to ease accountability standards, possibly to cover-up treacherous detainee abuse, and possibly to wiretap journalists. (Let alone to create lies of omission required to win an election....grrr...).
Justice hates a vacuum and people hate a tyrant, even a "regulated tyrant".
If Senators McCain and Graham come to grips with that, the more they might realize that stomping up-and-down about war powers didn't help Bush-Cheney and it won't help them (or anyone).
