Documents Point Finger at White House for Torture - Sydney Morning Herald

The price of pain - After Saddam - www.smh.com.au:

"Declassified FBI and military documents point the finger at the White House for allowing the torture of suspected terrorists."
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"It is now reasonably clear that there was action by the President," the American Bar Association's Scott Horton told the Herald. "I have now seen several further documents which persuade me that there is in fact a determination by the President that dates from roughly April 2002.
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(Attorney General Nominee) Gonzales did admit that at the time he asked the Department of Justice for a legal opinion on the US laws on torture which had come into effect after the US ratified the International Convention against Torture.

Gonzales directed his request to a Bush appointee, Jay Bybee, who was then head of the Office of Legal Counsel. Bybee was already on record advising the White House that Bush had sweeping powers as commander-in-chief to fight the war on terrorism...

He stated that the statutes on torture should only be read as covering what he called extreme acts. "Where pain is physical," he wrote, "it must be of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure." ... "There is a significant range of acts that though they might constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment fail to rise to the level of torture."
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...the US Bill of Rights and the Constitution includes a prohibition on "the use of cruel or unusual punishment"

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