Bush Secret Torture Powers Need Public Purge

Anyone who doesn't get their news through an IV drip from Fox or Rush Limbaugh knows, thanks to The New York Times, that George W. Bush has been secretly obtaining legal opinions that condone torture while publicly abiding by an opinion of former Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2004 that forbids it.

Last week, the Times, in a 3,000-word investigative piece, recounted interviews with attorneys in and out of the Justice Department revealing that Bush solicited two legal opinions contradicting public policy on torture.

The opinions allow simulated drowning, freezing temperatures, blows to the head and other techniques on anyone rounded up as a suspected terrorist, however random and mistake-prone the round up, and however unlikely it is that the suspect knows anything.

These secret opinions are operative to this day, even though contradicted by two subsequent pieces of legislation -- the Detainee Treatment Act and Military Commissions Act -- and a Supreme Court ruling that Article III of the Geneva Conventions applies to American detainees....

To continue reading, click here.

Comments

[jhNY]

Perhaps now would be a pertinent time to read about the parliamentary calculations and strategies employed by social moderates in their succesful reining in of Hitler's Nazi party, which prevented World War II and saved the Jews of Europe from genocide. Even if you're swamped at work, it shouldn't take long: the whole document is a pamphlet, and all four pages are blank.

The democrats who would thwart the present regime remind me of David in the old testament, if David had waited to secure Goliath's permission in writing that it was okay to use the slingshot before he let a single stone fly.

[jhNY]

Perhaps now would be a pertinent time to read about the parliamentary calculations and strategies employed by social moderates in their succesful reining in of Hitler's Nazi party, which prevented World War II and saved the Jews of Europe from genocide. Even if you're swamped at work, it shouldn't take long: the whole document is a pamphlet, and all four pages are blank.

The democrats who would thwart the present regime remind me of David in the old testament, if David had waited to secure Goliath's permission in writing that it was okay to use the slingshot before he let a single rock fly.

[GH]

How current climate of torture began:

GORE LIKEd RENDITIONS

[from Richard Clarke's book]

RICHARD CLARKE - Snatches, or more properly "extraordinary renditions," were operations to apprehend terrorists abroad, usually without the knowledge of and almost always without public acknowledgement of the host government. . . The first time I proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Clinton had seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, "That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass."
JANE MAYER, NEW YORKER - In 1995, American agents proposed the rendition program to Egypt, making clear that it had the resources to track, capture, and transport terrorist suspects globally - including access to a small fleet of aircraft. Egypt embraced the idea. "What was clever was that some of the senior people in Al Qaeda were Egyptian," [CIA veteran Michael Scheuer] said. "It served American purposes to get these people arrested, and Egyptian purposes to get these people back, where they could be interrogat­ed." Technically, U.S. law requires the CIA to seek "assurances" from foreign governments that rendered suspects won't be tortured. Scheuer told me that this was done, but he was "not sure" if any documents confirming the arrangement were signed."
WIKIPEDIA - Thereafter, with the approval of President Clinton and a presidential directive (PDD 39), the CIA instead elected to send suspects to Egypt, where they were turned over to the Egyptian mukhabarat. This arrangement suited the Egyptians, who were trying to crack down on domestic Islamic extremists, and a number of the senior members of Al Qaeda were Egyptian. The arrangement also suited the US by enabling the interrogation of suspects without the intercession of the domestic legal process, using Egyptian methods.

Source: The Progressvie Review

[bethinCary]

Yes what they are doing is illegal.

Yet the Dems act as nascent morons to the WH by the HW's continuing supplanting of words.
Prisoners are replaced with "enemy combattants".
outsourced overseas intercepted phonecalls are then called "foreign" phone calls....
Jon S. was right-the WH is trying to not only supplant the Constitution-but do so, by making up thier own language to try to legitimize and legalize it.
I think eventually history will prove it all to be illegal-yet none of the Dems will stop to figure it out and are therefore just as corrupt.