Holy mackeral!!!! According to the Washington Post, Bush's PERSONAL FINGERPRINTS are on the torture policy!
They keep demolishing my low expecations... every time I think it can't get any weirder or any worse or any stupider, they surprise me.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26401-2004Jun8.html
Memo Draws Focus To Bush
Aide: President Set Broad Guidelines
By Mike Allen and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A03
The disclosure that the Justice Department advised the White House in 2002 that the torture of al Qaeda terrorist suspects might be legally defensible has focused new attention on the role President Bush played in setting the rules for interrogations in the war on terrorism.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that Bush set broad guidelines, rather than dealing with specific techniques.
...
A former senior administration official involved in discussions about CIA interrogation techniques said Bush's aides knew them he wanted them to take an aggressive approach.
"He felt very keenly that his primary responsibility was to do everything within his power to keep the country safe, and he was not concerned with appearances or politics or hiding behind lower-level officials," he said. "That is not to say he was ready to authorize stuff that would be contrary to law. The whole reason for having the careful legal reviews that went on was to ensure he was not doing that."
And what did the "careful legal reviews" decide? That Bush can torture any m*herf*cker he wants!
The August 2002 memo from the Justice Department concluded that laws outlawing torture do not bind Bush because of his constitutional authority to conduct a military campaign. "As Commander in Chief, the President has the constitutional authority to order interrogations of enemy combatants to gain intelligence information concerning the military plans of the enemy," said the memo, obtained by The Washington Post.
How could they let the President get his fingers on the issue of torture? Just how stupid are these people?
They didn't give him deniability for Plame, either. What a bunch of fuckups. Evil, omnipotent, and incompetent. Not a good combination.
Now, who is going to ask the question: did the President's "broad guidelines" permit the atrocities that occurred at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and elsewhere?