Peace Is War, Up Is Down, and Torture is LEGAL

[babylonsister]

Peace Is War, Up Is Down, and Torture is LEGAL
Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2008-02-13 15:34. Media

White House Pushes Waterboarding Rationale
By Dan Eggen, Washington Post

Administration may be trying to shore up prosecution of terrorism suspects.


After years of refusing public comment on a particularly harsh CIA interrogation method, top Bush administration officials have suddenly begun pressing a controversial argument that it was legal for the CIA to strap prisoners to a board and pour water over their face to make them believe they were being drowned.

The issue promises to play a role in the historic military prosecution of six al-Qaeda detainees for allegedly organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in cases described by the Defense Department on Monday. One of the six detainees, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, was subjected to the technique known as waterboarding after his capture in 2003, and four of the others were subjected to different "enhanced interrogation" tactics by the CIA.

If the information the CIA collected is used in court, defense attorneys may attack it as tainted and unlawful. If the government relies instead on evidence the FBI collected in voluntary interrogations - using the CIA information as a road map - defense attorneys could still allege that the material is the "fruit of a poisonous tree" and unlawful.

The government's defense of the waterboarding episodes, laid out in congressional testimony and administration statements over the past two weeks, relies on a complex legal argument that many scholars and human rights advocates say is at odds with settled law barring conduct that amounts to torture, at any time or for any reason. It also leaves open the possibility that, under the right conditions, the CIA could decide to use the tactic again.

The strategy appears to be aimed primarily at ensuring that no CIA interrogators face criminal prosecution for using harsh interrogation methods that top White House and Justice Department lawyers approved in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks. Because waterboarding was deemed legal at the time by the Justice Department, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey told lawmakers, he has no grounds to launch a criminal probe of the practice.

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[SpiralHawk]

1. "Torture is our family Skull & Boner occultist republicon tradition. Smirk." - Commander AWOL