This logic is especially immoral since it offers to those U.S. citizens who tend to trust their president (but of course are not personally responsible for life-or-death decisions) an easy way to justify a cruel and unusual punishment.

In a continuation of this dehumanizing logic that same suspect and others like him will be subject to trial by military commissions that Neal Katyal described as "unbound by laws, the Constitution or treaties". The commissions will scrap the presumption of innocence and use the information procured by an "alternative set of procedures".

I'm not sure how much this will affect the U.S. national security or expose the U.S. troops abroad to cruel treatment. There are terrorist groups and leaders who have dedicated their lives to doing harm to America. How much more sophisticated can they get because some of their men will undergo unfair trial? They probably think of America's very existence as unfair.

For the same reason, U.S. soldiers stationed or fighting abroad are also at high risk. It does not help that the U.S. government has consistently opposed the International Criminal Court. The United States thus assumed a position that few in today's world recognize: That the U.S. has a high mission of clearing the world of evil and this makes Americans exempt from international standard of justice.

The reauthorizing military commission trials is yet another case of unequal standards justified by the needs of the war on terror, and the consequences of this measure will go beyond the situation in the U.S., be it the security of American civilians and servicemen or the American justice.

By authorizing torture and compromising on justice, the U.S. government undermines its own invaluable effort in many countries of the world where nongovernmental organizations sponsored by U.S. government fight against torture and injustice. Governments in countries such as Egypt or Uzbekistan take full advantage of the argument that the U.S. hypocritically and cynically pushes for eliminating the same practices abroad that it has authorized at home.

What Mr. Katyal and his legal team called "a dangerous and unprecedented expansion of executive authority" makes an excellent argument for increasingly authoritarian governments around the world, including president Putin's government in my country. The Russian ruling elite, as well as scores of loyalists, eagerly cites infringements on human rights associated with the U.S. war on terror. This way they may confidently reject U.S. criticism of the Russia human rights record and justify further crackdown on democracy by our own antiterrorism cause. My experience has it that even in talking with young, educated and reasonably Westernized Russians it is getting increasingly hard to persuade them of the advantages of the American judicial system. Presumption of innocence, competitive trial, justice for all are overshadowed by reports about Guantanamo detention center, torture and humiliation at Abu Ghraib, outsourced torture in illiberal countries and CIA authorization to jail and interrogate suspects.

The war on terror and the need to protect national security has been used by the U.S. and other governments as an excuse to override legal and even constitutional restrictions. In a country such as the United States with a long and solid history of the rule of law, the citizens may hope that the illeal or semi-legal practices will only apply to terrorism suspects. But what about those - political opponents, anti-war activists or anti-torture activists - who get in the way of the government war on terror? Is it fully impossible that the government might resort to emergency eavesdropping or other illegal practices in order to make its war on terror more efficient?

A presidential authorization means that "what would otherwise be unlawful or illegal becomes legal", the ex-U.S. president Richard Nixon said in a 1980 testimony at a post-Watergate trial of FBI illegal practices. The harm done to America by Nixon's abuse of authority was repaired by his forced resignation. President Bush appears to be dangerously eager to use his own authority in order to make illegal into legal. But thirty years after Watergate, in a global world the harm done to American values strongly affects other nations.