Congress killed measures to ban U.S. use of tortureBy Douglas Jehl and David Johnston The New York Times Friday, January 14, 2005
White House opposed including restrictions
WASHINGTON At the urging of the White House, congressional leaders scrapped a legislative measure last month that would have imposed new restrictions on the use of extreme interrogation measures by U.S. intelligence officers, congressional officials say.
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The defeat of the proposal affects one of the most shadowy arenas of the war on terrorism, involving the CIA's secret detention and interrogation of top terror leaders like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 2001 attacks, and about three dozen other senior members of Al Qaeda and its offshoots.
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The
Senate had approved the new restrictions, by a 96-2 vote, as part of the intelligence reform legislation. The restrictions would have explicitly extended to intelligence officers a prohibition against the use of torture or inhumane treatment, and it would have required the CIA as well as the Pentagon to report to Congress about the methods they were using.
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But in intense, closed-door negotiations, according to congressional officials,
four senior lawmakers from the House and Senate deleted the restrictions from the final bill after the White House expressed opposition to the measure. Two congressional negotiators said in interviews that lawmakers had ultimately decided that the question of whether to extend the restrictions to intelligence officers was too complex to be included in the legislation.
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In a letter to members of Congress, sent in October and made available by the White House on Wednesday, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, expressed opposition to the measure on the ground that it "provides legal protections to foreign prisoners to which they are not now entitled under applicable law and policy."
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http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/13/news/ban.html (snip)
In addition to
Collins and Harman, the lawmakers involved in the conference committee negotiations were
Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and
Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich.
(snip)
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/10643525.htmIn interviews on Wednesday,
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican negotiator, and
Rep. Jane Harman of California, a Democratic negotiator, both said the lawmakers had ultimately decided that the question of whether to extend the restrictions to intelligence officers was too complex to be included in the legislation
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=62671At times, their discussion included an assessment of whether specific measures, on a detainee-by-detainee basis, would cause such pain to be considered torture. In addition to Collins and Harman, the lawmakers involved in the negotiations were Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/01/13/MNGGUAPER31.DTLAnd to really ice the cake for is, our lawyer is Mr Torture-memo-Gonzalez himself... :mad:
Makes you really wonder why Charles Granier is in jail since torture is allowed.