Friday, December 31, 2004
Justice Department Has A Change Of Heart
With the confirmation hearings on Alberto Gonzales' nomination for Attorney General set to begin next week the Justice Department broadens its definition of torture. From the Washington Post article by Jeffrey Smith and Dan Eggen:
This second effort by the Bush administration to parse the legal meaning of the word "torture" was provoked by the damaging political fallout from the disclosure this summer of the first memo, drafted in August 2002 and criticized by human rights lawyers and experts around the globe.
Many of the critics charged that the first memo -- which they said laid out a very narrow view of what behavior might constitute torture and was crafted to help interrogators at the CIA evade prosecution -- created the context for a record of persistent ill treatment by that agency and the U.S. military of detainees at prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba's Guantanamo Bay and undisclosed locations.
I guess someone over at Justice figured out that with the new boss coming if this wasn't done now there may not be another chance for quite awhile.
Happy New Year!
PermaLink | 4:44 AM |
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This second effort by the Bush administration to parse the legal meaning of the word "torture" was provoked by the damaging political fallout from the disclosure this summer of the first memo, drafted in August 2002 and criticized by human rights lawyers and experts around the globe.
Many of the critics charged that the first memo -- which they said laid out a very narrow view of what behavior might constitute torture and was crafted to help interrogators at the CIA evade prosecution -- created the context for a record of persistent ill treatment by that agency and the U.S. military of detainees at prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba's Guantanamo Bay and undisclosed locations.
I guess someone over at Justice figured out that with the new boss coming if this wasn't done now there may not be another chance for quite awhile.
Happy New Year!
PermaLink | 4:44 AM |
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