{"id":1355,"date":"2004-10-06T08:25:38","date_gmt":"2004-10-06T12:25:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1355"},"modified":"2004-10-06T08:25:38","modified_gmt":"2004-10-06T12:25:38","slug":"torture-theyll-say-anything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1355","title":{"rendered":"Torture: they’ll say anything"},"content":{"rendered":"

The torture bill referred to in yesterday’s post is still going to congress. One of the Presiden’t lawyers, Alberto Gonzalez, wrote to the Washington Post<\/em> denying that Bush wanted torture legaised:<\/p>\n\n

The president did not propose and does not support this provision. He has made clear that the United States stands against and will not tolerate torture and that the United States remains committed to complying with its obligations under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Consistent with that treaty, the United States does not expel, return or extradite individuals to countries where the United States believes it is likely that they will be tortured.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

In case you are tempted to believe a word of this disclaimer, remember at Mr Gonzalez has previous form. On Jan 25, 2002, he advised<\/a> Bush, contra<\/em> Colin Powell, that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda prisoners were not subject to the procetions of the Geneva Conventions — ie that they might be tortured. “In my judgement”,<\/span> he then wrote, “the new paradigm”<\/span> (love that paradigm) “renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on the questioning of enemy prisoners, and renders quaint some of its provisions.”<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Perhaps the most sinister aspect of the whole story is the reports that leading Democrats believe these clauses were inserted as something they could not vote against<\/em> without appearing “soft on terror”. This would mean that the Republicans believe that torture wins votes.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The torture bill referred to in yesterday’s post is still going to congress. One of the Presiden’t lawyers, Alberto Gonzalez, wrote to the Washington Post denying that Bush wanted torture legaised: The president did not propose and does not support … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}