Pentagon Above the Law

First, the Pentagon defied a federal judge's order to release images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. Now, it's claiming to be above the rule of congress, voicing opposition to the John McCain sponsored amendment to the military appropriations bill that will curb the torture of war on terror detainees.

From The Weekly Standard (hand salute to Nitpicker):

In opposing the legislation, the Pentagon argues that it is not Congress's place to be arbiter of the rules for treatment of detainees, insisting that it alone should wield that power. It also warns, as spokesman Lawrence DiRita put it in a recent op-ed in USA Today, that by establishing a clear standard for interrogations, the amendment would "hamper the country's ability to readily adapt and update interrogation methods from Al Qaeda detainees who we know are trained to resist known interrogation techniques."

DiRita ("Curly Joe" to his friends) can always be relied on to reveal the internal fallacies of the Rumsfeld Pentagon group think.

Most critics of the Pentagon (including this one) agree that lack of "clear standards" was a key cause of the widespread prisoner abuse.

But more alarming is the Pentagon assertion that "it is not Congress's place to be arbiter of the rules" despite the fact that Clause 14 of Section 8 of Article I of the The United States Constitution states that Congress has the power…

…to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.

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Every American should be shocked and angry that so many of our civilian and military officials who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution have so little trouble ignoring it when it suits their purposes. This latest position on torture taken by the Pentagon is yet another piece of compelling evidence that America is turning into a militaristic oligarchy with theocratic overtones.

And it's a sad, Rovewellian state of affairs that the greatest threat to our federal republic comes not from terrorist organizations like al Qaeda, but from the executive branch of our own government.