Where the Hell is Geneva, Anyway?
The Bush administration and international law


After the 2000 election, I comforted myself by saying, "How much harm can one person do in four years?" I counted on the career bureaucrats to serve as a check on administration excesses. That was before such bureaucrats were demoted or fired for opposing anything Bush wanted to do. That was before agencies were staffed on the basis of ideology rather than competence.

The lists of the damage done in five years is very long, but I believe the most important consequence of the Bush White House has been the very serious decline in our nation's "soft power," that is the influence of our ideas and culture. That is not something military might can buy. For hundreds of years the United States stood as the role model for democracy. The most devastating victory of the terrorists has been their impact on our own democracy and civil rights. We have lost the moral high ground and ability to work for the expansion of human rights with the events in Iraq, the use of torture, the stiffling of dissent, and the disregard of even citizens' basic rights.

One of our most important sources for knowledge and common sense has become former bureaucrats and prior governmental and military insiders, such as Jeffery Smith, former General Counsel of the CIA. He wrote an op-ed piece in todays WP entitled Central Torture Agency?: I give below his conclusions regarding Cheney's attempt to exempt the CIA from any restrictions on torture:

The Post reported on Oct. 27 that John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, has directed intelligence agencies to "bolster the growth of democracy" and support the rule of law in other nations. Those are noble causes that will be embraced by all intelligence officers. But if the vice president's proposal is adopted, the CIA will presumably be free to bolster democracy by torturing anyone who does not embrace it with sufficient enthusiasm. Some democracy