"This stuff on enemy combatants, the Bush Administration has fought like a tiger to avoid having to produce any evidence to a judge to show why somebody is locked up in perpetuity. Another example of that is the torture scandal"
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Bovard doesn’t bother with euphemism; he spikes the language of national security with the blunt mechanics of power. “Fought like a tiger” is doing double duty: it paints the Bush Administration as ferocious and instinctual, but also a little panicked, clawing to keep daylight out. The target isn’t just detention policy, it’s the procedural dodge at its core: avoiding “produce any evidence to a judge.” That phrasing is deliberately courtroom-simple, a reminder that the controversy isn’t abstract liberty talk, it’s the basic democratic transaction of accusation and proof.
“Locked up in perpetuity” is the quote’s moral accelerant. Bovard chooses a phrase that evokes medieval imprisonment more than modern jurisprudence, pushing the reader to feel the permanence that legal memos tried to obscure with terms like “enemy combatant.” The subtext is that the category itself functions as a loophole machine: if you can rename the person, you can re-route the law.
Then he snaps the argument into a broader indictment: “Another example of that is the torture scandal.” Not “abuse,” not “excess,” but “torture,” and not isolated incidents but a “scandal” that implies institutional rot and public deception. The context is the post-9/11 architecture of indefinite detention, military commissions, and Abu Ghraib-era revelations, when the administration’s theory of executive power collided with images and testimonies it couldn’t fully contain. Bovard’s intent is prosecutorial: establish a pattern of evading accountability, with the courts as the denied venue and torture as the tell.
“Locked up in perpetuity” is the quote’s moral accelerant. Bovard chooses a phrase that evokes medieval imprisonment more than modern jurisprudence, pushing the reader to feel the permanence that legal memos tried to obscure with terms like “enemy combatant.” The subtext is that the category itself functions as a loophole machine: if you can rename the person, you can re-route the law.
Then he snaps the argument into a broader indictment: “Another example of that is the torture scandal.” Not “abuse,” not “excess,” but “torture,” and not isolated incidents but a “scandal” that implies institutional rot and public deception. The context is the post-9/11 architecture of indefinite detention, military commissions, and Abu Ghraib-era revelations, when the administration’s theory of executive power collided with images and testimonies it couldn’t fully contain. Bovard’s intent is prosecutorial: establish a pattern of evading accountability, with the courts as the denied venue and torture as the tell.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
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