Disregarding for a moment that there is a special court of ten judges, empowered by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that has the sole power to approve requests for phone tapping (and almost always does approve such requests), and also disregarding the fact that it is a clear lie that Congress implicitly authorized such surveillance with its 2001 resolution for use of force, one might consider other actions by the administration that were also perceived by the president as being within the law.

Since the inception of the war against Afghanistan in 2001, the administration has imprisoned thousands of individuals abroad under the dubious authority of the commander in chief to detain “enemy combatants”.  These men and women have for the most part had no trials nor appearances before judges to assess the validity of the claims.  They are essentially “disappeared”, as were thousands of people in the seventies and eighties in Latin America.  President Bush believes that this is within the law.

A special prison and alleged torture center was established in Guantanamo Bay in order to keep prisoners away from the basic protections afforded human beings in the US.  Despite repeated allegations of torture and abuse, hundreds of individuals remain incarcerated, most with little hope of emerging as the there is no system of due process.  President Bush argues that this is within the law.

The CIA and military contractors have repeatedly been implicated in cases of torture and murder in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a general environment of tolerance for cruel and unusual punishment, prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, has been established by the Bush administration, and specifically by officials such as Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.  Revealed in various memos and legal arguments, the administration’s policy was clear – suspected terrorists or insurgents had no rights and were to be tortured for information.  President Bush and Dick Cheney argue that such behavior is justified, having gone so far as to oppose a congressional resolution to ban cruel and unusual punishment by all US forces. Bush and Cheney believe they are within the law.

Over the past several years the CIA has been engaging in a procedure called rendition, by which high value targets are kidnapped and sent to countries notorious for torture so that they might be “questioned”.  These flights have been confirmed by several countries, as well as several specific incidences of kidnapping and torture.  President Bush believes this is within the law. 

The 2003 invasion of Iraq violated basic international laws relating to respect for sovereignty of other nations, and also abrogated the covenants of the United Nations.  Besides the more than 2,000 US soldiers killed in the war, estimates of Iraqis killed range from 30,000 to over 100,000.  Tens of thousands are being held in confinement in Iraq, imprisoned by the US forces or by their surrogates, with the prisoners having little recourse to receive fair trials, for there is essentially no justice system in the country.  President Bush assures us that he was within the law to order the invasion.