Bush is suddenly vetoing the $696 billion military authorization bill he had already agreed to:
[O]n Friday, with no warning, a vacationing Mr. Bush announced that he
was vetoing a sweeping military policy bill because of an obscure
provision that could expose Iraq’s new government to billions of dollars in legal claims dating to Saddam Hussein’s rule.
The pocket veto Bush is using here is legally dubious as it requires that Congress has adjourned. The Senate has not adjourned and is formally kept in session by the Democrats.
Officially the president is reasoning that a part of the bill would allow legal claims from victims of Saddam against money Iraq has parked in the U.S. Such, he says, would hurt Iraq’s reconstruction. (Iraq has $20-30 billion cash parked in the U.S., but is halving peoples food rations for lack of money?).
The NYT quotes someone who should know and who claims Bush’s reasoning is nonsense:
Meanwhile, a Washington lawyer who has represented Americans who were abducted by Iraqi forces after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait said that he doubted the official explanation for President Bush’s rejection of the bill.
This very late and unusual action against a bill which has wide majority support smells of panic. But panic about what?
A reader at Hullabaloo suggests:
I suspect that the key to the pocket veto has nothing to do with Iraqi assets. Rather, it is contained a little line buried in the last paragraph of the Memorandum of Disapproval: "… I continue to have serious objections to other provisions of this bill, including section 1079 relating to intelligence matters . . ."
That passage of the law (search for HR 1585) says:
SEC. 1079. COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE COMMITTEES ON ARMED SERVICES OF THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
(a) Requests of Committees- The Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the Director of a national intelligence center, or the head of any element of the intelligence community shall, not later than 45 days after receiving a written request from the Chair or ranking minority member of the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate or the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives for any existing intelligence assessment, report, estimate, or legal opinion relating to matters within the jurisdiction of such Committee, make available to such committee such assessment, report, estimate, or legal opinion, as the case may be.
Possible requests from Congress would include full National Intelligence Estimates, like the one on Iran, and legal opinions on torture or phone tapping, i.e. the FISA circumventions.
Congress has inherent authority to request such reports and opinions, but the administration has often blocked these anyway. The law would give Congress explicit statutory authority to obtain them, i.e. a much firmer legal case.
Dave Addington, Cheney’s lawyer, certainly didn’t like that prospect.