Subject: Re: Sell-out: Larry, Bush's policies condone torture, just one tool among many that he and Vice President Dick Cheney hope that no one will have the power legally to disclose, review or punish. Unfortunately, the Senate compromise appears to allow the president to detain any foreigner, anytime, anywhere, without limit and without an opportunity to challenge the detention or its conduct or consequences in any forum. A system of justice can only be measured by how it treats one person at a time. Bush just doesn't want it to measure him.

RESPONSE: It is not just the terrorists who use the fact that this administration in defining the war on terrorism as somehow different and thus one that validates American use of torture, secret prisons, lack of habeas corpus and other due process procedures, but our friends too see these actions as despicable. Recently, the head of Britain’s judiciary said that the U.S. military prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was an affront to democracy. Lord Facloner said Guantanamo violated a fundamental legal principle that courts be able to review the conduct of the executive. So our friends and not just those nuts in the International Red Cross and Amnesty International are telling us that we are violating basic human rights. I ask again; Where is our outrage?

The President recently stated; “The United States does not torutre...I have not authorised it and I will not authorize it.” There is simply no truth in that statement at all and the rest of the world know that. The president claims that this war is somehow different and thus justifies what he calls “an alternative set of procedures” that is nothing more than words to conceal approved Bush policies of torture; simulated drowning, sleep and sensory deprivation, induced hypothermia, and beatings that have been responible for dozens of detainee deaths that this administration has hidden or attempted to justify.

In this administration’s efforts to justify torture we are told more lies; that the questioning of prisoners using these techniques have led to American lives being saved...and Bush was specific in his recent speech to the American people. Unfortunately, the facts belie the spin. We are told that the harsh interrogations by the CIA led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mahammed who is portrayed as the planner of the 9/11 attacks. The truth is that Khalid was arrested as the result of a tip that the C.I.A. received from an Al-Qaeda walk-in willing to help, more than likely for the reward money.

The other name this administration brandishes to justify its torture policies is Abu Zubaydah, who under torture we are told supplied valuable information. This a man who under extreme torture, to stop the pain, gave out loads of information which proved to be false. He is described by the C.I.A. as mentally ill. How foolish can we be to take any representations on faith from this administration that has repeatedly lied to the American people.

The American military have basically opposed the Bush torture polices as ineffective and self defeating in the war for hearts and minds. This was underscored recently when Lieutenant General Kimmons, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence said; ”No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that. And, moreover, any piece of intelligence which is obtained under duress, through the use of abusive techniques, would be of questionable credibility, and additionally it would do more harm than good when it inevitably became know that abusive practices were used.”

As Congress is about to sell-out the principles by authorizing pretty much what Bush wants; the continuing ability to torture, to hold prisoners indefinitely without any kind of hearings and trial practices that allow for evidence derived from torture to be used in his desired kangaroo tribunals, it is the military retired leaders who have repeatedly spoken out against the damage of the use of questioning procedures that the Republican Congress is on the verge of giving to Bush...and it is all about the November elections rather that the safety of our country.