Last week, Attorney General John Ashcroft was called to testify before a congressional committee on the matter of the torture that took place at Abu Ghraib. The Bush administration, of course, is saying that the torture and various violations of the Geneva Conventions were just the act of a few bad apples. The preponderance of the evidence, however, indicates that the torture was ordered by the administration. In fact, word got out last night that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally ordered that some of those acts take place.
Well, when Ashcroft was asked to provide this congressional investigative with Department of Justice files that document the administration’s role in Abu Ghraib, he simply refused. Now, there’s only one constitutional method for the executive branch to refuse to provide such information to another branch, and that’s if the president invokes executive privilege. Of course, that would look bad, so Bush doesn’t want to do that. Instead, Ashcroft said, he simply wasn’t going to give up the documents, and that’s that.
Now, that’s not even vaguely in the realm of legal. But there is one remedy available: the attorney general can order that Ashcroft release the documents, and threaten to prosecute if he doesn’t. The only problem here is that, of course, Ashcroft is the attorney general.
That the Bush administration would simply refuse to obey the highest law in the land is appalling, although there is a certain mix of irony, given that the documents that they will not give up are documents that likely prove that the Bush administration failed to adhere to yet other laws.
I assume that the reason that all of this isn’t getting more coverage is that this is difficult to explain, and doesn’t have a good hook. The president isn’t refusing to cooperate. Executive privilege isn’t being invoked. Ashcroft is simply refusing to give up the documents, on no legal basis whatsoever.
Thankfully, John Stewart’s “Daily Show” had good coverage of this a few nights ago, and it’s well worth watching — here’s a 12MB QuickTime of the segment.