The OK for Torture

...In that case, there can be no conviction of a crime...

...The report stated: "In order to respect the President's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign . . . [the prohibition against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority...

...The Ashcroft torture memorandum helped shape the much longer March 2003 Pentagon report, which was explicit on how to evade the U.N.'s 1994 Convention on Torture, which this country signed in 1994- as well as the 1992 torture statute passed by Congress outlawing our use of torture anywhere...

...Actually, the March 2003 protocols for the use of torture in the war on terrorism were preceded by an August 2002 memorandum prepared by Ashcroft's Office of Legal Counsel in answer to a request from Rumsfeld and George Tenet...

...Ashcroft refused, without even invoking executive privilege...

...It depends on what "is" is...

...Other reporters also have it...

...At the top, George W Bush said he did not remember if he had ever read the 2003 report, and that his only directive on torture was that "anything we did would conform to U.S...

...We would not have known about the full draft of Patriot Act II-which John Ashcroft had told the Senate Judiciary Committee did not exist-if a member of his department had not leaked it in February of last year...

...Are there enough of the citizenry to keep it alive by inserting it into the Presidential campaigns...

...Nat Hentoff is a columnist for The Village Voice, Editor & Publisher, and The Progressive...

...On June 8, Ashcroft was told by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to turn over the March 6, 2003, report entitled, "Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism...

...But-watch this one!- just "knowing that severe pain or suffering was reasonably likely to result from [these actions] does not meet the test of specific intent...

...Since the White House is staff-directed from the top down, I cannot believe the President was not shown both reports...

...Ashcroft's clear rationale for selective torture was sent to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales...

...Already, this story is fading from the media...

...law and would be consistent with international treaty obligations...

...Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, dean of the McGeorge School of Law-and, tellingly, former general counsel to the National Security Agency and the CIA in Republican Administrations-told The Financial Times, "[These memos] appear better designed to defending criminals than to guiding the policies of the world's most powerful nation...

...Another brave constitutionalist has now leaked the Administration's extensive, classified 2003 justification for the use of torture against alleged terrorists-a story that then broke on the front page of the June 7 Wall Street Journal...

...The tone was set at the top, and we need to track the development of this Administration's policy on the use of torture...

...He is the author of "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance...

...The Pentagon report was put together by high-level lawyers from the Justice Department, each of the military branches, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a range of intelligence agencies...

...Necessity and self-defense . . . would eliminate any criminal liability," the 2002 memo stated...

...As Patrick Leahy, ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, angrily told the resistant Ashcroft: "If some in the Administration believe that prosecuting privates and sergeants will make this scandal go away, they are mistaken...

...These lawyers concede that torture may possibly be criminal if done with "the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering...

...But I have that Pentagon report, which states that Donald Rumsfeld ordered it declassified ten years from now...