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Bush Administration torture memo


EWolfe

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That article doesn't say shit. All it says is that Justice wrote a white paper opinion in response to an inquiry by CIA. It wasn't a memo by Bush, from Bush, or signed by Bush. It wasn't setting interrogation policy or anything. Pull you head out of your ass.

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The facts aren't important. What is important is the bad PR this creates. Another great recruiting tool for terrorist. Torture is a poor way to get info out of people. They will say what they think the tortures want to hear just to stop the pain. Let's fave it we are in over our heads in Iraq. The armchair wariors of Bush 2 are digging us deeper and deeper.

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I said Bush ADMINISTRATION, Greg. His Justice Department wrote the memo.

 

Plausible deniability is no excuse. thumbs_down.gif

 

MrE, the writing of a paper answering a question does not necessarily constitute direction by Bush's Administration or the Justice Department. From what I read, Justice was simply answering a question on legality and legal exposure that was posited by CIA. Nothing wrong with that. They are giving an opinion on THE LAW, not directing POLICY. They are two different things.

 

Why don't you use your skull for more than just a bouldering beanie holder? the_finger.gif

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Greg,

I think you may be confusing what came out Monday with what MrE is writing about. Monday's note was an internal Pentagon policy paper discussing the issue. Today's deal is a memo from the Bush administration (Justice Department) saying it's OK to torture terrorist suspects.

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I was going based on the article in the link. Now that I read it again, I see what you are saying. Regardless, there are rules about how much and how little you can "rough up" detainees/POW's/Enemies within the Geneva Convention (I believe).

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I was going based on the article in the link. Now that I read it again, I see what you are saying. Regardless, there are rules about how much and how little you can "rough up" detainees/POW's/Enemies within the Geneva Convention (I believe).

 

Seems like we must have left the Conventions rule books back home or something, eh? Why would CIA even be asking this question to the Justice Dept.? Doesn't look good no matter what the reason.

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Right on Teddy, have you finally seen the light? Can we count on you to organize the Boston branch of Impeach Bush Now? I knew sometime the dubious antics of this tawdry administration would move you beyond party loyalty and that your innate love of democratic institutions would lead you to reject the Hooligan In Chief. thumbs_up.gif

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As I understood the memo the whole point was how do we classify and hold the terrorist suspects in such a was that the Geneva Conventions and US law can be ignored. This isn't exactly a new thing.... why do you think were holding people at Gitmo? US laws don't apply there....

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1.

 

Nixon wasn't actually impeached since he saw the very obvious writing on the wall and resigned before it could happen.

 

Clinton is the one. Unlike Nixon he stood his ground because he knew he didn't do shit wrong that negatively impacted this country. Like he expected, the senate didn't convict him.

 

Why do you guys give a shit so much about Clinton getting his dick sucked? Lying about reasons to go to war, torture, etc. is a lot worse than lying about getting sucked off by the office intern.

 

Ironically his favorable rating went even higher after the incident! hahaha.gif

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From: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/politics/09TTEX.html

 

JANUARY 2002 A series of memorandums from the Justice Department, many of them written by John C. Yoo, a University of California law professor who was serving in the department, provided arguments to keep United States officials from being charged with war crimes for the way prisoners were detained and interrogated. The memorandums, principally one written on Jan. 9, provided legal arguments to support administration officials' assertions that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees from the war in Afghanistan.

 

JAN. 25 Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, in a memorandum to President Bush, said that the Justice Department's advice in the Jan. 9 memorandum was sound and that Mr. Bush should declare the Taliban and Al Qaeda outside the coverage of the Geneva Conventions. That would keep American officials from being exposed to the federal War Crimes Act, a 1996 law that carries the death penalty.

 

JAN. 26 In a memorandum to the White House, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the advantages of applying the Geneva Conventions far outweighed their rejection. He said that declaring the conventions inapplicable would "reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva Conventions and undermine the protections of the laws of war for our troops." He also said it would "undermine public support among critical allies."

 

FEB. 2 A memorandum from William H. Taft IV, the State Department's legal adviser, to Mr. Gonzales warned that the broad rejection of the Geneva Conventions posed several problems. "A decision that the conventions do not apply to the conflict in Afghanistan in which our armed forces are engaged deprives our troops there of any claim to the protection of the conventions in the event they are captured." An attachment to this memorandum, written by a State Department lawyer, showed that most of the administration's senior lawyers agreed that the Geneva Conventions were inapplicable. The attachment noted that C.I.A. lawyers 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.

 

AUGUST A memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department provided a rationale for using torture to extract information from Qaeda operatives. It provided complex definitions of torture that seemed devised to allow interrogators to evade being charged with that offense.

 

MARCH 2003 A memorandum prepared by a Defense Department legal task force drew on the January and August memorandums to declare that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal anti-torture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security. The memorandum also said that executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons, including a belief by interrogators that they were acting on orders from superiors "except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful.'

 

APRIL A memorandum from Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to Gen. James T. Hill outlined 24 permitted interrogation techniques, 4 of which were considered stressful enough to require Mr. Rumsfeld's explicit approval. Defense Department officials say it did not refer to the legal analysis of the month before.

 

DEC. 24 A letter to the International Committee of the Red Cross over the signature of Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski was prepared by military lawyers. The letter, a response to the Red Cross's concern about conditions at Abu Ghraib, contended that isolating some inmates at the prison for interrogation because of their significant intelligence value was a "military necessity," and said prisoners held as security risks could legally be treated differently from prisoners of war or ordinary criminals.

 

OTHER MEMORANDUMS Some have been described in reports in The Times and elsewhere, but their exact contents have not been disclosed. These include a memorandum that provided advice to interrogators to shield them from liability from the Convention Against Torture, an international treaty and the Anti-Torture Act, a federal law. This memorandum provided what has been described as a script in which officials were advised that they could avoid responsibility if they were able to plausibly contend that the prisoner was in the custody of another government and that the United States officials were just getting the information from the other country's interrogation. The memorandum advised that for this to work, the United States officials must be able to contend that the prisoner was always in the other country's custody and had not been transferred there. International law prohibits the "rendition" of prisoners to countries if the possibility of mistreatment can be anticipated. NEIL A. LEWIS

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