Politics: Dictator Bush

Bruce Schneier has a long article about President Bush secretly authorizing the NSA to engage in domestic spying without having to go through any legal procedures that regulate this activity. Here's part that caught my eye:

The result is that the president's wartime powers, with its armies,
battles, victories, and congressional declarations, now extend to the
rhetorical "War on Terror": a war with no fronts, no boundaries, no
opposing army, and -- most ominously -- no knowable "victory."
Investigations, arrests and trials are not tools of war. But according
to the Yoo memo, the president can define war however he chooses, and
remain "at war" for as long as he chooses.

This is indefinite dictatorial power. And I don't use that term
lightly; the very definition of a dictatorship is a system that puts a
ruler above the law. In the weeks after 9/11, while America and the
world were grieving, Bush built a legal rationale for a dictatorship.
Then he immediately started using it to avoid the law.



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