All lovers of liberty will be heartened by President Bush’s announcement that alleged terrorist prisoners held by the United States will not be subject to all sorts of torture, only certain kinds, and that they will be eligible for trial by a Military (US) Court.

It is unclear from Dubbya’s statement whether or not the tortures at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are within the allowable torture now set out by the Administration. Presumably they are since much of the brutality was mental not physical. It’s a tricky bit of lawmaking. Stung by the Supreme Court decision granting rights to US prisoners, the proposed legislation takes pains to ensure that the Supreme Court will not have a second bite at the apple. As one Law professor says “The act makes clear … that the Geneva Conventions are not a source of judicially enforceable individual rights.” Legal experts say it adds up to an apparently unique interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, one that could allow C.I.A. operatives and others to use many of the very techniques disavowed by the Pentagon, including stress positions, sleep deprivation and extreme temperatures. All this is necessary, says President Bush, in order to save American lives.

That, of course, is the rationale of all who would take away liberty.

The example that’s always trotted out is “what if there was a huge terrorist attack, another 9/11 planned, would the authorities be permitted to torture someone thought to know the plans?” – the technique of using the worst case scenario in order to justify a lesser evil. This is how you justify torture at all levels. Take the worst scenario and extend it to anyone you suspect of anything.

The issue isn’t whether or not these prisoners are bad people unto terrorists – for the sake of argument I will accept that they are. But aren’t they still entitled to the Rule of Law? The Nazi war criminals were given a fair open trial with legal representation. So have other alleged criminals through the years including, one must add, Saddam Hussein. Is the distinction that with those cases there was no real danger that the accused would go back and start another Nazi party or seize governments by force while here the assumption is that these prisoners would indeed go home and start plotting terrorist acts?

Are we to accept the word of George Bush, Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld that these prisoners are to be deprived of trial in a civil court with lawyers because to give them justice would be to encourage terrorism? Is their confidence in the American justice system so low that they don’t think the United States of America will be treated fairly?

Here is the fatal flaw – while the United States is preaching the Rule of Law and Democracy  to countries in the Middle East and says it wants these things for Iraq, it denies democracy and the rule of law to its own prisoners when it no longer suits American presidents and their lackeys.

Saddam Hussein gets a trial with whatever legal help he denies while prisoners held, often incommunicado, for over five years rot in jail. If you were an Iraqi or any other citizen living under a dictatorship, how much appeal would democracy, George Bush style, have for you?