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Friday, November 4, 2005

 

What Is Torture? – An interactive primer on American interrogation

`This series provides the facts and law to illuminate and add depth to the torture debate—not to persuade you to support or oppose it, but to help you formulate your own views on where the acceptable boundaries may lie. We’ve tried to separate facts from analysis, using principally the primary documents made available through government reports, leaks, or Freedom of Information Act requests. The aim is to inform the national conversation about the way America acts in the war against terror.’

Some of the legal memos are scary:

  • `The president has the authority to decide that Geneva does not apply.’
  • `The war on terror is a “new kind of war” … “in my judgment this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (i.e., advances of monthly pay) athletic uniforms and scientific instruments.”‘



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