Pentagon Report Set Framework For Use of Torture (WSJ Exclusive) [View All]

[Merlin]

Once again a very important, outrageous news story about this admin is released by the Pentagon in great detail exclusively to the Wall Street Journal, a paper with readership restricted to the elites, the online version of which requires a subscription. (This piece has been mirrored however. See below.)

Pentagon Report Set Framework For Use of Torture

Security or Legal Factors
Could Trump Restrictions,
Memo to Rumsfeld Argued

By JESS BRAVIN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

June 7, 2004; Page A1

Bush administration lawyers contended last year that the president wasn't bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn't be prosecuted by the Justice Department.

The advice was part of a classified report on interrogation methods prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after commanders at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained in late 2002 that with conventional methods they weren't getting enough information from prisoners.
...
emphasis added -- this part is incredible!

The working-group report elaborated the Bush administration's view that the president has virtually unlimited power to wage war as he sees fit, and neither Congress, the courts nor international law can interfere. It concluded that neither the president nor anyone following his instructions was bound by the federal Torture Statute, which makes it a crime for Americans working for the government overseas to commit or attempt torture, defined as any act intended to "inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering." Punishment is up to 20 years imprisonment, or a death sentence or life imprisonment if the victim dies.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108655737612529969,00.html
(subscription required)


Mirrored at http://www.go-titlepro.com/temp/WSJ-Pentagon-Torture.htm