by definition

During a visit to Stanford a while back Condi Rice gave us a great peek into the thinking of the Bush admin. and their ideas about who should be subject to the law. In this clip of her answering questions posed to her about waterboarding by a Stanford student, she states that "the president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our legal obligations under the conventions against torture," and then concludes with "and so, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the conventions against torture." This, of course, is essentially a fancy way of saying that if the president says something is legal it is, regardless of what the actual laws (or Constitution in many cases) say. That's not quite the way it works though.