Ignatius On "Kook" Addington
The Washington Post's ace op-ed man David Ignatius today discusses the method by which the Vice-President's chief of staff David Addington has steered internal White House debate about torture and other presidential "powers" towards an interpretation dangerously close to that belonging to a dictator.
Readers of this blog are already familiar with Mr. Addington (see A Kook By Any Other Name).
Addington is essentially Cheney's pit bull. His job is to attack anyone who believes that laws restrain the conduct of the Executive Branch during wartime.
Though working out of the relative obscurity of the vice president's office, he (Addington) has been able to impose his will on Cabinet secretaries and other senior administration officials. His influence rests on two pillars: his unyielding conviction that the powers of the president cannot be abridged in wartime, and the total support he receives from Cheney.
No one has had the guts to inform Mr. Addington that the United States is not actually involved in a Congressionally declared (the only kind there is) war.
Addington's relationship with Cheney developed during the 1980s, when the two learned the same hardball lessons about national security. Addington worked as an assistant general counsel at Bill Casey's no-holds-barred CIA from 1981 to '84, where a friend says he loved the culture of "go-go guys with a license to hunt." He got to know Cheney when he moved to Capitol Hill as a staffer for the House intelligence committee and later the Iran-Contra committee. "David has seared in his mind the restrictive amendments tying the president's hand in funding the Contras," remembers Bruce Fein, a Republican attorney who worked on the Iran-contra committee.
How did going around those restrictive funding amendments work out?
What drives Addington is a belief that the president's wartime powers are, essentially, unfettered, argues Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee who has attended highly classified briefings with him on detention and surveillance issues. "He believes that in time of war, there is total authority for the president to waive any rules to carry out his objectives. Those views have extremely dangerous implications." Harman's efforts to negotiate compromises with Addington on interrogation issues were rebuffed, she says, by his insistence that "it's dangerous to tie the president's hands in any way."
What effing war is tool talking about? The war on terror? The war on drugs? The war on poverty? The war on high home heating costs?
Though born in Washington, he styles himself as a "rugged Montana man" in the image of his boss, and he has a photo in his office of Cheney shooting a gun.
Nice.
In a noteworthy shift in his usual style, Ignatius actually closes with the important truth of the matter:
Even people who describe themselves as friends of Addington believe that he has damaged President Bush politically by pressing anti-terrorism policies to the legal breaking point. And for many Republicans who bear scars from Addington, his story raises the ultimate question about the Bush White House: Who's in charge here?
Readers of this blog are already familiar with Mr. Addington (see A Kook By Any Other Name).
Addington is essentially Cheney's pit bull. His job is to attack anyone who believes that laws restrain the conduct of the Executive Branch during wartime.
Though working out of the relative obscurity of the vice president's office, he (Addington) has been able to impose his will on Cabinet secretaries and other senior administration officials. His influence rests on two pillars: his unyielding conviction that the powers of the president cannot be abridged in wartime, and the total support he receives from Cheney.
No one has had the guts to inform Mr. Addington that the United States is not actually involved in a Congressionally declared (the only kind there is) war.
Addington's relationship with Cheney developed during the 1980s, when the two learned the same hardball lessons about national security. Addington worked as an assistant general counsel at Bill Casey's no-holds-barred CIA from 1981 to '84, where a friend says he loved the culture of "go-go guys with a license to hunt." He got to know Cheney when he moved to Capitol Hill as a staffer for the House intelligence committee and later the Iran-Contra committee. "David has seared in his mind the restrictive amendments tying the president's hand in funding the Contras," remembers Bruce Fein, a Republican attorney who worked on the Iran-contra committee.
How did going around those restrictive funding amendments work out?
What drives Addington is a belief that the president's wartime powers are, essentially, unfettered, argues Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee who has attended highly classified briefings with him on detention and surveillance issues. "He believes that in time of war, there is total authority for the president to waive any rules to carry out his objectives. Those views have extremely dangerous implications." Harman's efforts to negotiate compromises with Addington on interrogation issues were rebuffed, she says, by his insistence that "it's dangerous to tie the president's hands in any way."
What effing war is tool talking about? The war on terror? The war on drugs? The war on poverty? The war on high home heating costs?
Though born in Washington, he styles himself as a "rugged Montana man" in the image of his boss, and he has a photo in his office of Cheney shooting a gun.
Nice.
In a noteworthy shift in his usual style, Ignatius actually closes with the important truth of the matter:
Even people who describe themselves as friends of Addington believe that he has damaged President Bush politically by pressing anti-terrorism policies to the legal breaking point. And for many Republicans who bear scars from Addington, his story raises the ultimate question about the Bush White House: Who's in charge here?
posted by Effwit at 10:27 AM
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