Most Americans know that the administration of George W. Bush tried to push the envelope on the limits of presidential power. Little did we know how far he and his people were prepared to go after the September 11th terror attacks. Had their twisted view been fully implemented, America would be a very different place.
Here are just a few of the powers our last president was prepared to assume, as exposed in secret legal opinions by his own administration lawyers. His lawyers said it was no problem to use the US military inside the country to combat suspected terrorists, and to conduct raids without a search warrant. Foreign treaties could be unilaterally abrogated, and detainees suspected of terrorism could be handled with no input from Congress.
Much of this came from the minds of three people, according to the memos. John Yoo, Robert Delahunty, and Jay Bybee also conspired to gut the First Amendment in the name of successfully waging war in addition to all the above violations of basic American rights.
The fact that these opinions came out in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 is no excuse for them. Certainly the nation was rightly concerned with the potential for acts of terror within our boundaries. Yet subsequent events have shown the Bush Administration was ill equipped to insure that innocent people wouldn't get caught up in the wide net they were prepared to cast.
The only silver lining in all this is a memo dated this past January, just before Bush left office. It repudiates the proposed excesses of earlier opinions, even as it makes feeble excuses for their creation.
George W. Bush was ready, willing, and able to create a "1984" in 21st century America. We are lucky he didn't succeed, and we have a new president who understands the freedom can't be compromised on the level Bush wanted.
Yet how do we make sure this doesn't happen again?
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