Bush Justice in its Last Throes

Will this nightmare never end? As he leaves office, President Bush sticks his thumb in the eye of world by seeking the death penalty for 6 detainees in the Guantanamo prison camp, three of which the US government acknowledged it tortured. The detainees have been held without due process outside all known laws, and will be tried by kangaroo courts that make a mockery of the US legal system. Can anything be more damaging to America’s prestige in the world? 

The world sees America in the dock:

"Everything about Guantanamo is an affront to the values the US says
it is defending in the War on Terror. The principle of holding hundreds
of people there without charge, for years; the fluid rules of the
“military commissions” used for the very few who will be tried; the
torture that the Administration acknowledges has been practised on
these six: all these are an assault on the US Constitution.

To
see the most powerful country in the world scrabbling on the edge of a
nearby island, with whose leader it is not on speaking terms, for the
sole purpose of evading its own laws and principles, is an
embarrassment."

Heinrich Wefing in Die Zeit:

Nichts hat den Vereinigten Staaten im Kampf gegen den Terror so sehr
geschadet wie der Verrat an ihren eigenen Prinzipien. Dass ausgerechnet
die USA das Recht systematisch verbogen, durchlöchert und missbraucht
haben, dass Gefangene gefoltert wurden und die rule of law nur
noch nach Ermessen des Präsidenten gilt, das ist ein Triumph für die
Feinde Amerikas – und ein quälender Schmerz für seine Freunde. (Nothing has damaged the US in its war on terror more than the betrayal of its own principles.  That the US, of all nations, has systematically bent and misused the law, that detainees were tortured and the rule of law was determined at the discretion of the president – that is a triumph for America’s enemies, and a very painful ordeal for its friends.)

But it is not entirely correct to say that this represents Bush justice in its last throes. The lawless principles on display here will most likely persist long after Bush leaves office next year.  Just listen to this chilling interview with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on BBC Radio. Here Scalia mocks Europeans for opposing the death penalty, declares that the US Constitution does not protect a woman’s control over her own uterus, and sees nothing wrong with …. torture.  Scalia – like all Supreme Court justices – is appointed for life.