Can the leader of a democratic nation decide which laws he will obey?
The answer, of course, is no. Through the power of the people and its representatives, the US is a nation of laws. That holds true even for the president. Interestingly, the president’s Republican party may lose its grip on congress in the legislative elections in November. This brings up the possibility of his impeachment. The concept of the unitary executive is not the image Americans wish to project. There are even conflicts within the Bush administration. The Pentagon, under the leadership of the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, wishes to rewrite a portion of the Army Manual, omitting the Geneva Convention Detainee Rule that bans “humiliating and degrading treatment”. The state department fiercely opposes the military’s decision and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider. Then there is a problem with the contrast between what our leaders are saying and what they are doing. Rumsfeld recently stated: “We do not intend to occupy [Iraq] for any period of
