An example of waterboarding. (Photo Credit: CC BY-SA/Karl Gunnarsson/Wikipedia)

In former President George W. Bush’s new memoir “Decision Points,” he defends waterboarding. The controversial interrogation technique was used by U.S. authorities to obtain information from radical Islamist prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. As Bush reiterated during an interview with Matt Lauer, he approved waterboarding because his lawyers told him it was legal.

Waterboarding as a preventative measure

Waterboarding became a hot topic nationally after 9-11. The U.S. intelligence community believed the threat of a repeat terrorist attack was high. Intelligence agents assured President Bush that information on future attacks existed. Permission to waterboard was requested, the president consulted with his attorneys and got the green light.

‘Why is waterboarding legal?’

Lauer took the first step in asking the big waterboarding question when he asked Bush why he thought it was legal. The former president responded as follows:

“Because the lawyer said it was legal. He said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act. I’m not a lawyer, but you gotta trust the judgment of people around you. And I do.”

But the natural extension of that line of inquiry, writes NPR – the climactic question that America still wants answered – went unasked by Lauer. While waterboarding may have been legal, was it a “moral” choice? President Bush has spoken openly of being a “born-again” Christian, and many media sources are curious to hear whether the choice to utilize waterboarding – which is considered torture by many nations – gels with his religious faith.

‘Decision points’ to murky waters

Dealing with terrorism and national security requires swift, decisive decisions. Most people may never fully understand what it’s like to have to make such decisions, yet such is part of the burden of being a world leader. Waterboarding may be legal, but its morality remains an issue for many. By point of historical comparison, slavery was once legal in America, but critics existed from the beginning. Abortion is legal, but many people question its morality.

Waterboarding faces similar questions – and now, the statute of limitations has expired on the ability to prosecute over the CIA’s destruction of Abu Ghraib interrogation recordings. Thus, no prosecutions can occur for obstruction of justice. Prosecutions over waterboarding may never occur, even though President Obama has banned the practice and stated that it can no longer be ordered by a president.

Sources:

NPR.org

A moment from the Bush-Lauer waterboarding interview

According to Rep. Cynthia Lummis, elderly estate-holders are foregoing dialysis in order to die before the estate tax hits in 2011. (Photo Credit: CC BY-SA/Shanel's mom/Wikipedia)

Provided Congress fails to pass legislation to keep it dead and buried, the estate tax will rise from the grave on New Year’s Day, 2011. According to the Associated Press, this has prompted many elderly estate holders and their heirs to consider desperate measures. U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wy.) recently stated that a number of her constituents are even planning to stop dialysis and other life-preserving treatments so they can die before the door closes on 2010.

Estate tax: It’s not all in the family

While Rep. Lummis declined to name anyone she knew who planned to take the estate tax shuttle to the terminal end, she did hint at what many people in business may be thinking. Many ranchers and farmers in Wyoming would rather pass along their businesses to family than see it go to the government.

“If you have spent your whole life building a ranch, and you wanted to pass your estate on to your children, and you were 88-years-old and on dialysis, and the only thing that was keeping you alive was that dialysis, you might make that same decision,” Lummis told the AP.

President Bush’s tax cuts: A wealthy reprieve

Bush era tax cuts effectively buried the 45 percent estate tax (aka the death tax). It was an ideal time to be an heir to a dying estate holder. Inheritance, certain wage income, interest, dividends and capital gains were all shielded from the government. Estates smaller than $3.5 million ($7 million for married couples) have been exempt from the estate tax since 1916, and 2010 was the golden year when even the largest estates were exempt.

If the estate tax returns in 2011, the exemption level will be lower – estates less than $1 million will be exempt– but the tax rate will be higher at 55 percent. Joseph Thorndike of the non-profit Tax Analysts told the Wall Street Journal that jumping from zero to 55 percent would be “the largest increase in a major tax that (the U.S. has) ever seen.”

Sources

Associated Press

Did Big George duck the tax?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPqn2Zr0r-Y