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The New York Times
Opinion
The Fine Point
EDITORIAL,
nytimes.com January 30, 2008
With President Bush, you always have
to read the footnotes.
Just before Monday night’s State of the Union speech, in which Mr. Bush extolled
bipartisanship, railed against government excesses and promised to bring the
troops home as soon as it’s safe to withdraw, the White House undermined all of
those sentiments with the latest of the president’s infamous signing statements.
The signing statements are documents that earlier presidents generally used to
trumpet their pleasure at signing a law, or to explain how it would be enforced.
More than any of his predecessors, the current chief executive has used the
pronouncements in a passive-aggressive way to undermine the power of Congress.
Over the last seven years, Mr. Bush has issued hundreds of these insidious
documents declaring that he had no intention of obeying a law that he had just
signed. This is not just constitutional theory. Remember the
detainee treatment act, which Mr. Bush signed and then proceeded to ignore, as
he told C.I.A. interrogators that they could go on mistreating detainees?
This week’s statement was attached to the military budget bill, which covers
everything except the direct cost of the war. The bill included four
important provisions that Mr. Bush decided he will enforce only if he wants to.
The president said they impinged on his constitutional powers. We asked
the White House to explain that claim, but got no answer, so we’ll do our best
to figure it out.
The first provision created a commission to determine how reliant the government
is on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, how much waste, fraud and abuse has
occurred and what has been done to hold accountable those who are responsible.
Congress authorized the commission to compel government officials to testify.
Perhaps this violated Mr. Bush’s sense of his power to dole out contracts as he
sees fit and to hold contractors harmless. The same theory applies to the
second provision that Mr. Bush said he would not obey: a new law providing
protection against reprisal to those who expose waste, fraud or abuse in wartime
contracts.
The third measure Mr. Bush rejected requires intelligence officials to respond
to a request for documents from the Armed Services Committees of Congress within
45 days, either by producing the documents or explaining why they are being
withheld. Clearly, this violates the power that Mr. Bush has given himself
to cover up an array of illegal and improper actions, like his decisions to spy
on Americans without a warrant, to torture prisoners in violation of the Geneva
Conventions and to fire United States attorneys apparently for political
reasons.
It’s glaringly obvious why Mr. Bush rejected the fourth provision, which states
that none of the money authorized for military purposes may be used to establish
permanent military bases in Iraq.
It is more evidence, as if any were needed, that Mr. Bush never intended to end
this war, and that he still views it as the prelude to an unceasing American
military presence in Iraq.
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