Memo shows US official disagreed with Bush administration's view on torture
Source: AP
A memo about harsh interrogation techniques shows that a former US state department official strongly dissented from the Bush administration's secret legal view in 2005 that an international treaty against torture did not apply to CIA interrogations in foreign countries.
Until now, the February 2006 analysis by Philip Zelikow has been a high-level, classified internal critique of the Bush administration's controversial interrogation policies. At the time he wrote his criticism, Zelikow was secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's representative on terrorism issues to the national security council's deputies committee.
The state department released Zelikow's memo Tuesday under the freedom of information act to the National Security Archive, a nonprofit advocacy group for openness in government.
In late 2005, Bush signed an amendment sponsored by John McCain that the Republican senator believed applied international standards of cruel and degrading treatment to US interrogation practices.
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/04/george-bush-state-department-torture
= new reply since forum marked as read
"Torture is totally evil, and against everything I taught"- JC
The U.S. government committed war crimes. Said war crimes and war criminals have not been prosecuted and probably never will be as the U.S. government is too cowardly to do so.
"In his five-page memo, Zelikow wrote that the state department earlier had agreed with the justice department's view."
Translation - the State Department agreed with the Yoo/Bybee, etc. that torture wasn't torture and Zelikow is claiming the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 changed that agreement. So, he supported torture prior to the DTA? Somehow, that's when he knew torture was wrong? But not before. Seriously? BULLSHIT. I'm not saying his memo draft doesn't exist - I'm saying he's full of shit if it took the DTA to tell him torture was wrong or that he should question Bush's crimes.
McCain's DTA already gave war criminals an out by granting them a defense for committing torture, when there should NO legal defense passed by government for committing defense... a legal out for torture should never come from the government - unless they government wants to allow people to get away with torture...itself included. So let no one pretend McCain was some sort of hero or good guy. Congress passed a protective cover for war crimes. Such should never be forgotten. Providing a legal cover for torture makes you just as guilty as those who did the actual torturing...whether that cover is provided in a memo by the DOJ or by an act of Congress or the actions of the executive.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/gazette/2005/12/detainee-treatment-act-of-2005-white.php
"
a) Protection of United States Government Personnel- In any civil action or criminal prosecution against an officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent of the United States Government who is a United States person, arising out of the officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent's engaging in specific operational practices, that involve detention and interrogation of aliens who the President or his designees have determined are believed to be engaged in or associated with international terrorist activity that poses a serious, continuing threat to the United States, its interests, or its allies, and that were officially authorized and determined to be lawful at the time that they were conducted, it shall be a defense that such officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent did not know that the practices were unlawful and a person of ordinary sense and understanding would not know the practices were unlawful. Good faith reliance on advice of counsel should be an important factor, among others, to consider in assessing whether a person of ordinary sense and understanding would have known the practices to be unlawful. Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit or extinguish any defense or protection otherwise available to any person or entity from suit, civil or criminal liability, or damages, or to provide immunity from prosecution for any criminal offense by the proper authorities."
There is absolutely no way anyone thought that torture or the cruel & inhumane was legal...not in "good faith" ...not in any manner. It's a bullshit cowardly get-out-of-jail-free clause.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/04/secret-torture-memo/
"In 2005, he wrote, both the Justice and State Departments had decided that international prohibitions against “acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture” do not “apply to CIA interrogations in foreign countries.” Those techniques included contorting a detainee’s body in painful positions, slamming a detainee’s head against a wall, restricting a detainee’s caloric intake, and waterboarding."
Waterboarding IS torture. It has ALWAYS been torture and absolutely anyone claiming otherwise is a liar. Anyone in government (or its agents or the military) pretending they didn't know better is a liar.
"Zelikow wrote that a law passed that year by Congress, restricting interrogation techniques, meant the “situation has now changed.”"
Seriously? Now it has changed? Because before torture was just so wonderful and the legal thing to do? Seriously?
What bullshit.
Fuck this shit.
