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but why your particular position on this particular matter?
it is not as though the bush administration has not engaged in some curious legal reasoning--take the question of torture, for example--consider not only the 2002 memo prompted by gonzalez. but the "clarification" of the justice department's position that was released a couple days ago (again prompted by gonzalez, two days before his confirmation hearings for ag were to start)---in the first, torture was defined in such a narrow way as to legitimate almost anything--in the second, torture was defined more broadly in order to limit political damage: the wind on this blows from several directions--which way do you go?
it should be obvious that these shifts are politically driven, not based on matters of principle. in both memos, the arguments were structurally the same: given a definition of torture x, the following outcomes are "legal"---would you find yourself in a position of having to shift ground under the cover of the same kind of argument along with this shift in position on the part of the administration?
same question could obtain for the definition of "illegal combattant"--it seems obvious that the administration is coming under increasing pressure on this question as a function of the persistence of its policies not only in guantanomo, but in iraq, in outsourcing torture, etc etc etc. i would expect this policy--and the definitions that underpin it--will change as well. will your position shift along with it?
in other words, are you simply applying the letter of the bush administration's current positions and acting as though these positions represent definitive legal interpretations?
if so, why would you then accuse those who argue in opposition to you as having somekind of de facto monopoly on political motivations?
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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