Abuse Scandal Focuses on Bush Foundation

[pinniped]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040517/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_prisoner_abuse&cid=544&ncid=716

Abuse Scandal Focuses on Bush Foundation

2 minutes ago

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Iraq (news - web sites) prisoner abuse scandal shifted Sunday to the question of whether the Bush administration set up a legal foundation that opened the door for the mistreatment. Within months of the Sept. 11 attacks, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales reportedly wrote President Bush (news - web sites) a memo about the terrorism fight and prisoners' rights under the Geneva Conventions.

"In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions," Gonzales wrote, according to the report in Newsweek magazine. Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) "hit the roof" when he read the memo, according to the account.

Asked about the Gonzales memo, the White House said, "It is the policy of the United States to comply with all of our laws and our treaty obligations."

The roots of the scandal lay in a decision, approved last year by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a classified operation for aggressive interrogations to Iraqi prisoners, a program that had been focused on the hunt for al-Qaida, The New Yorker magazine reported.
-----------------------
more:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040517/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_prisoner_abuse&cid=544&ncid=716

------------------------

The idiot in the wh knew.

[soleft]

1. Duplicate, please discuss here. Thanks

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=559180