The C.I.A. in Double Jeopardy

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/opinion/30finder.html?_r=1

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 6:40 AM
Subject: re: The C.I.A. in Double Jeopardy
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    Even before the United States were the United States, we had values and standards. In 1775, George Washington charged his men: "Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause... for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country."

These values are still our values, now enshrined in our statutory law.  Joseph Finder turns our system of government on it's head, making a set of "guidelines" propagated in the Executive branch trump the law, duly enacted by our Legislature, in accordance with our Constitution.  It is to the law that every American in answerable, and it is the sworn duty of the President of the United States to "see that the Law is faithfully executed".

Barry Levine