John Ashcroft to Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, "This administration rejects torture."
Well, of course they reject torture...they just got caught doing it.
How about last year, did the Bush administration reject torture then?
Turns out, last year Bush was asking his team of lawyers to refine legal arguments that would allow him to sidestep the restrictions of American and international law, as well as the Geneva Convention, to torture prisoners/suspected terrorists. We know because half the memos were leaked to the New York Times.
From the Associated Press in the Houston Chronicle, this is what Bush lawyers came up with:
"In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign," the lawyers wrote in the 56-page confidential memorandum, the prohibition against torture "must be construed as inapplicable to interrogation undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority."
How about the year before that, what was the Bush Administration's stance on torture?
From same article:
A Jan. 22, 2002, memorandum from the Justice Department that provided arguments to keep U.S. officials from being charged with war crimes for the way prisoners were detained and interrogated was used extensively as a basis for a May memorandum on avoiding proscriptions against torture.
Another memorandum obtained by the Times indicates that most of the administration's top lawyers, with the exception of those at the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, approved of the Justice Department's position that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the war in Afghanistan.
In addition, that memorandum, dated Feb. 2, 2002, noted that lawyers for the CIA asked for an explicit understanding that the administration's public pledge to abide by the spirit of the Conventions did not apply to its operatives.
So when Bush says he's against torture he means right now, at this minute. But just as soon as he can get away with it...
DustBowl Dem
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