Document a Day: Calling the Illegal "Legal"
This undated summary of legal advice provided by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) chronicles the systematic manner in which government lawyers authorized abusive interrogations for both the CIA and Department of Defense.
As we have seen in the past few days, the Department of Defense’s interrogation program, though it did not involve waterboarding, used many other “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” and was every bit as brutal in its impact—and undoubtedly much more widespread.
Note not only the similarity of techniques, but also the OLC's consistent advice regarding supposed defenses to the use of torture. According to the OLC, an interrogator who engaged in torture might claim that he was acting out of necessity or self defense. Those defenses are specifically prohibited by Article 2 of the Convention Against Torture: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”
Document:
To read more about and see documentary evidence of the Bush administration's torture program, go to thetorturereport.com.
Jun 9th, 2010 at 8:16am
No matter how you slice it the ACLU is on the side of the terrorists.
Jun 9th, 2010 at 12:53pm
No matter how you slice it the ACLU is on the side of the AMERICAN CITIZENS.
Jun 9th, 2010 at 3:12pm
Dear Anonymous,
I always heard that an intelligent man could reevaluate his ideas based on new evidence. What brought you to this astounding slice?
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