Thursday, July 06, 2006

Not even in their bush dreams

I can only suspect that US President George W. Bush can only look upon new Russian Anti-terror laws with something akin to envy. Report taken from the Jerusalem Post:
Parliament's lower house on Wednesday unanimously approved legislation that would give President Vladimir Putin more freedom to send forces abroad to fight terrorism, and tighten restrictions on media coverage of anti-terror operations inside Russia.

In a 429-0 vote, State Duma lawmakers approved amendments to a series of laws in a move they said was connected to Russia's ratification of a Council of Europe anti-terrorism convention.

One change would remove a requirement that the president provide details about a planned operation when requesting permission from the upper parliament house, the Federation Council, to use military or security forces for anti-terrorist operations abroad. Existing law requires that he provide details on operations using forces outside Russia; Backers of the legislation said that could jeopardize operations by telegraphing information to terrorists. And according to the newspaper Kommersant, existing law mentions only armed forces - not special forces.

Talk about an abuse of power just waiting to happen.

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