NYT pg1: White House Says Prisoner Policy Set Humane Tone

[DeepModem Mom]

INMATES
White House Says Prisoner Policy Set Humane Tone
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Published: June 23, 2004


WASHINGTON, June 22 — In a February 2002 directive that set new rules for handling prisoners captured in Afghanistan, President Bush broadly cited the need for "new thinking in the law of war." He ordered that all people detained as part of the fight against terrorism should be treated humanely even if the United States considered them not to be protected by the Geneva Conventions, the White House said Tuesday.

That statement of principle, which has been described publicly but never before released in its entirety, came at a time of intense debate within the Bush administration over how far the military and the intelligence agencies could and should go in using coercive interrogations and torture to extract information from detainees, administration officials said as they released hundreds of pages of previously classified documents related to the development of a policy on the detainees.

By late 2002, the documents showed, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld was fleshing out the policy under intense pressure to squeeze more information from people seized in Afghanistan. He briefly approved techniques including the use of dogs, and by April 2003 he approved the use, under some conditions, of interrogation techniques including changes in diet, reversing sleep cycles, and isolation.

But the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, told reporters on Tuesday that Mr. Bush never considered more aggressive options set out by administration lawyers, including those in an August 2002 Justice Department memo that appeared to offer a permissive definition of torture. The Justice Department on Tuesday essentially disavowed that memo, saying it was now considered irrelevant. It is being rewritten, a senior department official said.

(The article adds: "The documents released Tuesday did little to settle some of the central questions surrounding what happened at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including whether the administration tacitly or explicitly encouraged military personnel and intelligence officers — in Afghanistan, at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and finally in Iraq — to be more aggressive than the written policies for dealing with detainees would permit." Also: "Democrats said the documents released Tuesday appeared to represent only a portion of important legal documents related to detainees.")


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/23/politics/23ABUS.html

[LittleApple81]

1. Of course, they only released the documents THEY WANTED to

release and produced to back up their claims of "innocence." So everbody is thinking the same:" ....the documents released Tuesday appeared to represent only a portion of important legal documents related to detainees." Not only the democrats.

[FreakinDJ]

2. This explains why the whole world hates US

The Iraqi people knew about the torture months before the American public and the rest of the world. the fighting in Fallujia and other cities is more representative of people not wanting a group of PERVERTS raiding their sons and daughters

[Disturbed]

3. Scapegoating.

First BushCo scapegoated the CIA and now the Military.

Is BushCo that powerful?

[DeepModem Mom]

4. Adding WP, pg1: "Memo on Interrogation Tactics Disavowed"

Memo on Interrogation Tactics Is Disavowed
Justice Document Had Said Torture May Be Defensible
By Mike Allen and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 23, 2004; Page A01

President Bush's aides yesterday disavowed an internal Justice Department opinion that torturing terrorism suspects might be legally defensible, saying it had created the false impression that the government was claiming authority to use interrogation techniques barred by international law.

Responding to pressure from Congress and outrage around the world, officials at the White House and the Justice Department derided the August 2002 legal memo on aggressive interrogation tactics, calling parts of it overbroad and irrelevant and saying it would be rewritten.

In a highly unusual repudiation of its department's own work, a senior Justice official and two other high-ranking lawyers said that all legal advice rendered by the department's Office of Legal Counsel on the subject of interrogations will be reviewed.

As part of a public relations offensive, the administration also declassified and released hundreds of pages of internal documents that it said demonstrated that Bush had never authorized torture against detainees from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In doing so, the administration revealed details of the interrogation tactics being used on prisoners, an extraordinary disclosure for an administration that has argued that the release of such information would help the enemy....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60719-2004Jun22.html

[teryang]

5. I'd take this as an admission

<The Justice Department on Tuesday essentially disavowed that memo, saying it was now considered irrelevant.>

This means that at a prior time it was considered relevant.

The Lehrer report had one of the former administration lawyers on television last weekend essentially still making the absurd "commander in chief" argument for torture. This fascist lawyer is a "law professor" now.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

7. Yep. "irrelevent" but it'll be "rewritten."

"Er, um...ignore that cookie jar on my hand!"

[LeftHander]

6. Like they are ever going to admit they ok'd torture...

How dumb do they think the American people are?

Of course they wanted it to happen. Are they ever going to own up to it?

No they never will. Not even when a smoking gun is stuck right in thier face they will still lie.

This administration has taken the art of saying one thing doing the exact opposite then saying they never did anything once they get caught.

OVER and OVER and OVER again....

[gratuitous]

8. Ah, a "humane" tone

How to humanely cook hundreds of prisoners in a container transport. The humane massacre of prisoners in the yard. The humane way to beat someone to death.

Oh, so humane.

[Jacobin]

9. "Compassionate torture"

A new oxymoron comes out of this admnistration daily now.

[Frances]

10. And the CNN scroll says that Bush ordered humane treatment

I guess that settles that.

It was just a few bad apples.

I am so mad at this spin I could spit!

[Bo]

11. They are lying

[struggle4progress]

12. What? Do the sadists whistle Mozart or something? eom

[saigon68]

13. As they HUMANELY SHOVED A FLASK LIGHT UP THE POW'S RECTUM

I wonder if they used K-Y on IT ?????

[hansolsen]

14. Original Headline changed

When this article first appeared on the NYTs website, the title and first sentence contained no qualifiers whatsoever.

I sent the following post to the public editor's website, and the title was changed by morning:

"Headline writers have a tough job

Today's front page article on President Bush and administration policies on torture, has this summary lead on the front page of the web edition:

"Orders by Bush About Prisoners Set Humane Tone
By Rischard W. Stevenson
President Bush ordered all people detained as part of the fight against terrorism be treated humanely, the White House said."

The article goes on to say that the pile of material released today to prove this assertion is incomplete, and far from definitive.

One would never know this from the headline.

Why is that?"