*, you have set the stage....now you must stand on it

This is an excerpt from a Statement by the President, dated June 26, 2003.

Link: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/06/20030626-3.html

"Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. Beating, burning, rape, and electric shock are some of the grisly tools such regimes use to terrorize their own citizens. These despicable crimes cannot be tolerated by a world committed to justice."

"The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment."

He said June 26, 2003 that "torture continues to be practiced around the world." And he was proven correct! So "get off his back."

"The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example.

Who here thinks that Bush really mightnot have known about this? I'll bet that even rumsfeld might not have known...watching that testimony, it seemed like nobody knew what was going on.

he knows nothing about anything that goes on. But, considering that they were all TOLD in January what was happening, ignorance is not a defense in this case.

and I'll say it again. Rumsfeld gets reports from the field constantly. He is a "detail" man. Rumsfeld in turn reports to Bush at least weekly. There was a news item in a January CBS news report about the investigation into the abuse. Myers knew and reported it to Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld knew and reported it to Bush, so Bush knew. That is a given.
The problem for them is the pictures. When the pictures and Taguba report were leaked to the media, the jig was up. They all knew from at least January to date.

Read Hersh's article in the New Yorker. A desperate hope for good news, while ignoring the bad. They simply refused to see.

n/t

No Good Defense
By Evan Thomas
Newsweek

May 17 issue - Donald Rumsfeld likes to be in total control. He wants to know all the details, including the precise interrogation techniques used on enemy prisoners. Since 9/11 he has insisted on personally signing off on the harsher methods used to squeeze suspected terrorists held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The conservative hard-liners at the Department of Justice have given the secretary of Defense a lot of leeway. It does not violate the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, the lawyers have told Rumsfeld, to put prisoners in ever-more-painful "stress positions" or keep them standing for hours on end, to deprive them of sleep or strip them naked. According to one of Rumsfeld's aides, the secretary has drawn the line at interrogating prisoners for more than 24 hours at a time or depriving them of light.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4934213

rummy knew and according to General Peter Pace, bush knew too - last January.

It does not violate the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, the lawyers have told Rumsfeld, to put prisoners in ever-more-painful "stress positions" or keep them standing for hours on end, to deprive them of sleep or strip them naked.

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I THOUGHT that the Geneva Conventions were put in place to prevent this sort of 'random opining' by the lawyers'. The Geneva Conventions were/are vitally important because they DO SET the standard.

"I will not engage in so-called nation building"
"I will have a humble foreign policy"

When has he EVER had to live up to anything he's said?