http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/columnists/rnavarrette/stories/061204dnedinavarrette.e905.htmlRemember when the administration told us that the beatings, rapes and murders at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were the isolated misdeeds of a few bad apples?
No such luck. What's gone bad is the whole orchard. In fact, the trail of apple juice goes all the way back to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
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That's how Mr. Ashcroft feels about memos drafted by Justice Department lawyers in 2002 at the request of the CIA and sent to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. The memos aren't classified, but Mr. Ashcroft is treating them as such. He's ignoring demands by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that he release them.
The memos – together with a similarly worded March 2003 report by lawyers at the Pentagon – were apparently part of a serious discussion in various quarters of the administration about whether one could justify the torture of enemy prisoners.
According to the memo, the answer is "yes." As has been reported in The Washington Post, one of the memos – numbering 50 pages – suggested that the interrogation of suspected terrorists might qualify for an exemption from existing prohibitions against torture as spelled out in international law. And now the administration seems to be insisting the memo itself is exempt from U.S. laws written to ensure the transparency of government, i.e., the Freedom of Information Act.
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Never mind the whole world. How about the American people? You know, the folks who pay Mr. Ashcroft's salary and that of every lawyer on his staff and who provide the budgets for the Justice Department, CIA and the White House counsel, and who – in a far more significant sacrifice – send their sons and daughters off to fight and die in wars in a world that is made more dangerous for combatants as long as torture remains in the interrogator's toolbox. For the sake of its own troops, the administration must state the obvious: that torture is a moral abomination not to be excused by civilized nations.
...lots more...