Jun. 24, 2004 - 20:18 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Operation CYA

An article by Curt Anderson of the Associated Press in todays paper, in part.

Treatment of prisoners revised

Early rules written after 9/11; changes reflect war in Iraq

"WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department is rewriting its legal advice on how far U.S. interrogators can go to to pry information from detainees, working under much different circumstances from the writers of earlier memos that appeared to justify torture."

"The first memos were written not long after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, while the new advice is being crafted against the backdrop of prisoner abuse in Iraq."

"Justice Department lawyers will spend several weeks reviewing and revising several key 2002 documents, especially a 50-page memo to the White House on Aug. 1, that critics have characterized as setting the legal tone for the mistreatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad, Iraq."

"The reason the orginal memo was so damaging was that was consistent with a pattern of conduct from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay (Cuba) to Iraq," said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University."

A day after releasing hundreds of pages of legal memos on the terror war, Bush administration officials reiterated even though President Bush signed a declaration saying he had the authority to ignore international rules for treatment of captives, no orders were given to torture or mistreat prisoners."

The decision to release the memos and disclose that some were being revised came amid intense political pressure from Democrats and other critics stemming from the abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet no Bush administration officials flatly said the memos were wrong."

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In an editorial at the Rocky Mountain News today there was this;

"We're still appalled by the fact that some attorneys in the Justice Department developed legal arguments in 2002 and 2003 justifying the use of torture if it was used to obtain vital intelligence. It so happens that this country is a signatory to conventions outlawing torture under any circumstances."

"But the evidence is accumulating that the legal thesis that thumbed its nose at international standards was never embraced as official policy, even though it was distilled into a detailed internal report. More over, even when harsh interrogation tools were approved that fell short of physical torture, other government lawyers successfully warned that those tactics probably also went too far."

"For example, the latest declassified documents reveal that in late 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved such interrogation measures as threatening prisoners with dogs, stripping them and making them stand for up to four hours. But within a month Rumsfeld had second thoughts and put that policy under review, and in April 2003 it was superseded by rules that no longer permitted the use of dogs and the removal of prisoner's clothes."

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In my opinion, Mr. Bush signing a declaration in 2002 saying he had the authority to ignore international rules for treatment of captives . . . . I guess that declaration is still in effect ? ? ? ? ? All this stuff done in 2002 and 2003 -- and still the abuse happened ? Lawyers of the Justice department cooking up excuses for U.S. torture of prisoners ? The Justice department ? Holy cow, that gives me a lot of faith in our justice system, now doesn't it ? Legal loopholes to cover any thing that looks a bit rotten porhaps ? This stuff if never disclosed could have been an escape hole for any of our administration to use for an excuse for those miserable actions. All this uproar and furor has a lot of reasons to be. One to my mind it is Mr. Bush's "My way or no way," attitude.

So, it seems that the politicians are trying to rewrite something that should have never been written in the first place.

So, backwater, back up, deny -- and we are in Operation CYA . . . . . . . . . �

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