So Bush exercised the tenth veto of his presidency to overturn legislation that would force the CIA and other covert agencies to adhere to the same standards of interrogation as the military. Thus those agencies can continue doing whatever the heck they want, including the oft-used phrase “enhanced interrogation”, without regard for law or even human decency.
In defending his veto, Bush used his standard rhetoric:
Ahh, the terrorists. Those mythical shadowy figures that make it okay for our country to abandon its standards and sink to their level, if not below it.
The other tired line Bush used was this one:
I call that the Elephant in My Backyard argument. I paid a billion dollars to install an anti-elephant defense system in my backyard, and in the five years it’s been in place, not a single elephant has been in my backyard. Thus, the billion dollars was well-spent and clearly the defense system is the reason there haven’t been any elephants. The Bush administration’s use of this argument is a non sequitur and proves only that they have no strong justification for their course of action.
I can only hope that when he leaves in ten months, some semblance of reason and humanity will return to this nation.