Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry Message Board

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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry

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To: CalculatedRisk who wrote (30999)	6/16/2004 7:30:25 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) of 81568

A little legal redefinition and torture becomes a necessary abuse to save the US June 14, 2004 Before Iraq, a Pentagon report redefined the US President's power when it came to interrogations, writes Robert Manne. One of the most pressing issues of American politics can be summarised like this. Does responsibility for the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib lie with the seven junior military police officers already under arrest? Or does it extend to the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and to the President, George Bush? Last week, remarkable new light on this puzzle was shed with the publication by The Wall Street Journal of a 56-page extract from a classified Pentagon report on the legality of torture. The context of this report needs to be understood. By early last year the US interrogators of al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were frustrated. Through the use of current interrogation techniques only small amounts of valuable intelligence had been extracted. Harsher methods seemed to be required. The Pentagon working group was asked to provide an opinion on whether tougher procedures exposed US interrogators to the threat of a future prosecution for torture. It answered this in two main ways. On the one hand, its report raised the bar on the kinds of actions it thought a US court might regard as torture. In its opinion, torture occurred only if physical injury was "of such a high level of intensity that the pain is difficult for the subject to endure". On the other hand it argued that even though the US had ratified the UN Convention against Torture in 1994, at least at times of hostilities the President was not bound by any such law. contd....http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/13/1087065030070.html#

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