Memo said Bush could OK torture of prisoners

From the New York Times via the Houston Chronicle:

The March memorandum, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Monday, is the latest internal legal study to be disclosed that shows the administration's lawyers were set to work after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to find legal arguments to avoid restrictions imposed by international and American law.

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.

And there's also this fun house explanation of what, exactly, constitutes torture in the eyes of the Bush administration:

The March 6 document about torture provides elaborate and tightly constructed definitions of torture. For example, if an interrogator "knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent even though the defendant did not act in good faith," the report said. "Instead, a defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within his control."

Click here for the rest.

So, how high up does the Abu Ghraib torture scandal go? I think it's now safe to say that it goes all the way to the top, to the White House. No more pussyfooting around. President Chimp clearly approved of this barbaric bullshit, which is not much of a surprise to me at all, given all the dots that were already out there, waiting to be connected.

And, my god, the Oval Office definition of torture gives new meaning to the term "Clintonian." Old Bill got slippery with the definition of the word "is," but he was just trying to save his own skin from a partisan witch hunt. Our current President, however, was trying to find a way to torture helpless people without facing any consequences for torturing helpless people: according to the White House, it's only torture if pain is inflicted for it's own sake. That is, if a captive has the crap beaten out of him in order to gain information, it's not torture! Such a definition renders meaningless any previous understanding of the word, which is, of course, F'ing crazy.

I hope everybody understands the ramifications of this memo: the United States is now a nation that wholeheartedly approves of torture. Needless to say, I am beyond appalled. An America that loves torture is not a free country, not a just and righteous nation. That's right. As of this moment, America is officially evil.

Oh, one more thing. Any Americans who approve of or defend the President's position on torture are flirting with evil themselves.

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