Torture Becomes a Matter of Definition

[struggle4progress]

Bush nominees refuse to say what's prohibited. U.S. dilemma is that it wants to disavow abuse but retain leeway in pressuring suspects.

By Sonni Efron, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON — The question Democratic senators put to Condoleezza Rice last week seemed easy enough to answer: Did the secretary of State nominee consider interrogation practices such as "water-boarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he will drown, to be torture?

She declined to answer. <snip>

In the months since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the administration has insisted that America does not and will not use torture. At the same time, the government has tried to preserve maximum leeway in the interrogation of terrorism suspects by not drawing a clear line between where rough treatment ends and torture begins. <snip>

"We've dramatically undermined the war effort by getting on the slippery slope in terms of playing cute with the law, because it's come back to bite us," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a former military judge, told Gonzales during a hearing earlier this month. <snip>

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-torture23jan23,1,3295533.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

[7th_Sephiroth]

1. Clinton: Its a matter of what the meaning if "IS" is

Bush: its a matter of what the meaning of "torture" is

now, wich person was the worst president?