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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sylvester80 who wrote (160284)	4/10/2005 2:46:07 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 281500

The article has a headline of "NEWS: BUSH APPROVED TORTURE TECHNIQUES " Big caps, and the statement that Bush approved torture. Not "Bush alleged to have approved torture". Then down in the body of the article you find out that "The ACLU is urging the White House to confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release the order if it exists." The alleged document reportedly "authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." I can reasonably be argued that such actions are not torture. The article does reference actual torture mentioning an FBI agent who had "observed numerous physical abuse incidents of Iraqi civilian detainees," including "strangulation, beatings, [and] placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings." Of course the existence of such activities, doesn't amount to evidence that they where approved at any high level, let alone by the president. And then of course there is the fact that this isn't a direct account backed up by evidence, but rather indirect references "appear to describe an account" about torture. It appears likely that torture did happen, and its possible that mistreatment short of torture may not have even been rare, but its a big jump from those statements to the statement that Bush approved torture. Tim