If you don’t recognize the title of this post, it is a quote by President Nixon from his interview with David Frost. I was reminded of it by an article in The Guardian UK. If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to.

Think Nixon was the only one who believes that?

Note this breathtaking exchange [between Vice President Dick Cheney and] Fox News at the weekend. He was asked: “If the president during war decides to do something to protect the country, is it legal?” Cheney’s answer: “General proposition, I’d say yes.”

If you would like to know more …

here is another editorial by the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/opinion/18thu1.html

And here is the abbreviated Senate Armed Services Committee Report:
http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2008/
Detainees.121108.pdf

I’ll quote from that Senate Report:

On February 7, 2002, President George W. Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. Following the President’s determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions, used in SERE training to simulate tactics used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions, were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody.

In other words, we get to ignore the Geneva Conventions when we want to.

I wonder if President Bush will pardon both his buddies and also himself as he leaves office.

A while back I posted here http://www.myephemerae.com/getting-on-an-airplane-the-tsa-experience and recently I received a comment from Cait Morgan that it required IDs at every stage of the process to board an airplane. That wasn’t my recent experience so I wrote others and asked for their comments. Some of those comments are coming in. I’d love to have yours too. (Please make them “there” instead of “here”.) Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure that was Cait’s experience. That said I would note that small airports see to relish their tight security more than big ones (like Dallas Fort Worth, Atlanta and Denver). Several years ago when I flew a lot more, security guards at small airports all seemed to believe it was their personal assignment and part of their sacred honor to individually save America while those at big airports seemed to believe they should follow the rules, confiscate fingernail clippers and cash their pay check while reminding us that they had the badges. Just my very biased opinion.