US lawyers working for Rumsfeld have surprisingly decided that the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply to Bush because, “he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security.” This is hilarious.
The report also advised that if an interrogator "has a good faith belief his actions will not result in prolonged mental harm, he lacks the mental state necessary for his actions to constitute torture."
Another great point, “The March memorandum also contains a curious section in which the lawyers argued that any torture committed at Guantánamo would not be a violation of the anti-torture statute because the base was under American legal jurisdiction and the statute concerns only torture committed overseas. That view is in direct conflict with the position the administration has taken in the Supreme Court, where it has argued that prisoners at Guantánamo Bay are not entitled to constitutional protections because the base is outside American jurisdiction.”
Posted by bluprnt at June 11, 2004 05:39 PM