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I'm excerpting this from a Counterpunch article about Bush's responses to questions about torture after the G-8. It's great reporters (Europeans at least) are hammering the little man:
It was European reporters who seemed most interested in pressing Bush on the torture issue, and who were not at all impressed with his continuing assertions that he was telling people to act in terms of the law. Bush has no knowledge of history, but European reporters do, and all of them at the G-8 press conference were no doubt aware how assiduously Hitler got laws passed to authorize everything he did. Hitler's government and its actions were all legal; it was a defect in moral vision that undergirded their atrocities.
Nothing about the torture questions appeared in the New York Times or any of the other major US newspapers, but European papers were full of it. Neither did the US press report that after Bush spoke, Jacques Chirac said that in the war on terrorism we should not "forget the principles on which our civilization rests, such as human rights."
Here are the torture parts of Bush's G-8 press conference:
First time Bush was asked about legalizing torture:
Q Mr. President, the Justice Department issued an advisory opinion last year declaring that as Commander-in-Chief you have the authority to order any kind of interrogation techniques that are necessary to pursue the war on terror. Were you aware of this advisory opinion? Do you agree with it? And did you issue any such authorization at any time?
THE PRESIDENT: No, the authorization I issued, David, was that anything we did would conform to U.S. law and would be consistent with international treaty obligations. That's the message I gave our people.
Q Have you seen the memos?
THE PRESIDENT: I can't remember if I've seen the memo or not, but I gave those instructions.
Second time Bush was asked about legalizing torture:
Q Returning to the question of torture, if you knew a person was in U.S. custody and had specific information about an imminent terrorist attack that could kill hundreds or even thousands of Americans, would you authorize the use of any means necessary to get that information and to save those lives?
THE PRESIDENT: Jonathan, what I've authorized is that we stay within U.S. law.
Third time Bush was asked about legalizing torture:
Q Mr. President, I wanted to return to the question of torture. What we've learned from these memos this week is that the Department of Justice lawyers and the Pentagon lawyers have essentially worked out a way that U.S. officials can torture detainees without running afoul of the law. So when you say that you want the U.S. to adhere to international and U.S. laws, that's not very comforting. This is a moral question: Is torture ever justified?
THE PRESIDENT: Look, I'm going to say it one more time. If I -- maybe -- maybe I can be more clear. The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That ought to comfort you. We're a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might look at those laws, and that might provide comfort for you. And those were the instructions out of -- from me to the government.
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