[Vision2020] And the Ugly Get Uglier (Memo Claims Bush Can OK Torture)

[Tom Hansen]

Greetings Visionaires -

>From today's (June 10, 2004) Spokesman Review.

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Memo claims Bush can OK torture
Report asserts presidential power trumps treaties

WASHINGTON – A March 2003 Pentagon report arguing that the United States
isn't bound by laws and treaties against torture has caused a major rift
between Bush administration officials seeking maximum leeway to question
prisoners and military lawyers who fear reprisals against U.S. troops.

The 52-page classified memo, prepared for Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld, offered a sweeping assertion of executive power, declaring that
Congress and the federal courts have no authority to limit the detention and
interrogation of combatants captured in war if the president approves the
actions.

"Any effort by Congress to regulate the interrogation of unlawful combatants
would violate the Constitution's sole vesting of the commander-in-chief
authority in the president," the report claimed.

Even though the administration was claiming the right to ignore laws and
treaties against torture, officials say it has abided by them.

Specialists in military law expressed consternation at the report, one of a
number of memos leaked in recent days that suggest that the Bush
administration was exploring ways to circumvent international treaties and
U.S. laws that prohibit torture and mistreatment of prisoners.

"They were trying to reverse a 50-year history of adherence to the Geneva
Conventions and torture conventions, and it's very troubling," said Scott
Silliman, a former Air Force officer who heads the Center on Law, Ethics and
National Security at Duke University.

Eugene Fidell, who directs the nonpartisan National Institute of Military
Justice, said the assertion of broad executive powers to defend the use of
torture was of special concern.

"That's what has really raised eyebrows, that presidential power trumps
everything – courts, laws, treaties, Congress," Fidell said.

Officials in the Bush administration have said no torture ever was
authorized for use against prisoners captured during the war on terrorism.

On Tuesday, Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to turn over to the
Senate Judiciary Committee copies of an August 2002 Justice Department
memorandum that senators and news stories said also provided defenses
against torture.

Ashcroft said the memos were internal legal advice that never led to any
directive authorizing torture, and said the administration never authorized
any interrogation techniques that could be described as torture, whether in
Iraq, Afghanistan or Guantanamo.

Margaret Stock, a West Point professor of national security law and a
lieutenant colonel in an Army Reserve police unit, noted that the new
interpretations of torture prohibitions have caused controversy. "There's
been extensive debate and disagreement between civilian and military on
these issues for a couple of years now," she said.

The Pentagon memo was written before U.S. troops entered Iraq by a working
group of lawyers in several departments, headed by Air Force General Counsel
Mary Walker. Much of it explored how to narrowly limit the legal definitions
of torture and advised on ways that U.S. personnel could avoid war-crimes
prosecution.

The memo was prompted by a request to Rumsfeld from Gen. James Hill, the
commander of the U.S. Southern Command, for a legal review of permissible
interrogation techniques at Guantanamo, where more than 600 suspected
terrorists, most of whom were captured in Afghanistan, were detained,
according to a former administration official who participated in drafting
the memo.

Hill was seeking answers to questions at the Guantanamo Bay detention
facility about whether more coercive interrogation techniques could be used,
said the former official, Mark Jacobson.

A Pentagon spokesman said Rumsfeld approved 24 "humane" interrogation
techniques for use at Guantanamo in April 2003, and four of them required
his personal review for use. The Pentagon didn't disclose the techniques,
and they aren't detailed in the portion of the March 2003 report disclosed
this week.

Jacobson, who worked on detention policy in the Pentagon until last year,
said those techniques were "nothing like what happened at Abu Ghraib prison"
in Iraq. According to other reports, they involved "stress and duress"
techniques such as sleep and food deprivation.

For the last two years, the administration has told Congress it's strictly
adhering to the Geneva Conventions and applicable treaties.

Several members of Congress said this week that recent disclosures had
undercut that assurance.

"Congress has been repeatedly assured that all interrogations were being
conducted in accordance with the Convention on Torture," said Rep. Jane
Harman, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.

"However, the (report) states that the U.S. law implementing the convention
does not apply to the conduct of U.S. personnel at Guantanamo," Harman said.
She has visited Guantanamo three times, and "this extraordinary argument was
never advanced."

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