White House Endorsed CIA Tactics in Memos
Posted by Matt Ortega on October 15, 2008 at 12:14 PM
Washington Post:
The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.
The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.
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MCCAIN SAYS HE WILL BRING HOME THE TROOPS VICTORIOS. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? WHEN ARABS ARE NO LONGER KILLING EACH OTHER? WHEN THERE ARE NO LONGER ANY AL-QUEDA OPERATIVES IN IRAQ? WHEN THERE ARE NO LONGER ANY IRANIAN OPERATIVES IN IRAQ? SEEMS LIKE WE'LL BE SPENDING 10 BILLION A MONTH IN IRAQ FOR THE NEXT MILLION YEARS.
McCain's real position on torture is tortured, he was outspoken in opposition to mistreatment of prisoners, and WE ALL KNOW HE WAS ONCE A PRISONER OF WAR, so it' hard to explain his logic, other than the maverick isn't really one.
Gleen Greenwald wrote in Salon.com (4/27/08)
On 4/27/08, the Justice Dept wrote to congress that "American intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law." They based their position on the Military Commissions Act championed by McCain, which "required" compliance with the Geneva Convention. BUT, it also contained an important proviso, it "vested sole and unchallenged discretion in the President to determine what does and does not constitute a violation of the (Geneva) Convention."
Greenwald writes, "In 2005 McCain led the effort in the Senate to pass the Detainee Treatment Act, which made the use of torture illegal...but...McCain meekly accepted two White House maneuvers that diluted the legislation to meaningless: 1) the torture ban expressly applied only to the US military, but not to the itelligence community (eg, CIA, contracted agents)and 2) after signing the DTA into law, which passed the Senate 90-9, Bush issued one of his first 'signing statements' declaring he had the power to disregard even the limited prohibitions on torture imposed in McCain's law. McCain never once objected to Bush's defiance of the legislation."
"This year McCain voted to oppose a ban on waterboarding, claiming that it was unnecessary given that waterboarding is already considered illegal by the Bush administration--an assertion about which he later admitted he had no real knowledge and which is, in any event, simply untrue."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/27/mccain/
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