What exactly does Rummy think? He told Chris Wallace this:
WALLACE: The Bush administration and you personally have come under fire recently for the treatment of prisoners in the war on terror. We've been having a running debate on this show about that. And the head of Amnesty International USA, William Schulz, called you an apparent high-level architect of torture. And here's how he explained it on this program. Let's take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAM SCHULZ, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA: Those who authorized it or encouraged it or provided rationales for it, or in the case of Rumsfeld provided the exact rules -- 27 of them, in fact, for interrogation, some of which do constitute torture or cruel, inhumane treatment.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Mr. Secretary, how do you respond?
RUMSFELD: Well, you know, I'm not a lawyer but the president and the attorney general decided that -- after 9/11 -- that putting terrorists into the Article III of our Constitution criminal justice system as though they were car thieves or people who -- bank robbers or something like that, who need to be taken off the street and punished and then released -- wasn't the way to do it; that we needed to use military commissions.
And that the purpose of that was that you needed to keep them away from the battlefield, number one. And number two, you needed to find out information from them that would prevent further attacks.
That decision was made by the president. And we are implementing it on behalf of the country.
I think it's the right decision. It is debatable. People are arguing it and discussing it, and it's being contested in the courts, and that's fine.
Some people contend that by doing that, you keep people in and they don't have a date certain when they can get out because they haven't been sentenced as such. That's always been true with prisoners of war. There's nothing new there.
There are some people who contend that it is torture -- tantamount to torture to keep people in without having a date when they can be released. I don't happen to agree with that.
The fact of the matter is these are bad people, these are suicide bombers, these are murderers. This is the 20th hijacker from 9/11 down there. These are people who are out to kill people.
We've released hundreds from Guantanamo Bay. And we've already found 12 of them back on the battlefield trying to kill innocent men, women and children.
So it is a new environment. It's understandable that there would be debate about it. But the implication in that is clearly not correct.
WALLACE: But let me ask you, I mean, there's certainly one question, the legal question, as to whether they should be detained, what their status should be. There's another question, which is the specific treatment that they have undergone.
The International Committee on the Red Cross, which is the only independent group that has been given regular access to Guantanamo and other U.S. facilities, according to a news report late last year, they complained to U.S. officials -- and here it is -- about psychological and physical treatment, quote, "tantamount to torture: humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions, some beatings."
And then there was also -- and this is what Dick Durbin (search) was talking about -- an FBI agent who said that he went in and saw several prisoners who had been chained hand and foot to the door in fetal positions, forced to defecate on themselves, chained in those positions for 18, 24 hours or more.
Question: Does that happen?
RUMSFELD: First of all, the president insisted that all prisoners, detainees, be treated humanely. I have issued instructions from the very beginning that all prisoners be treated humanely.
WALLACE: Did these kinds of things happen?
RUMSFELD: Just a minute.
Those are allegations. We have investigated something like 309 instances of alleged abuse of one type or another. There have been, I believe, 50 convictions of people for not obeying the rules that have been established.
The prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are being treated humanely. They have been. The suggestion that people have been killed down there is false. They are being fed better than American troops, more expensively, because of their dietary...
WALLACE: But,sir, I'm not asking about that. I'm asking about these specific cases, which I assume you've heard...
RUMSFELD: Every one have been investigated. And the ones where anything wrong occurred, people have been punished, whether they're a general officer or whether it's another type -- a colonel or whatever or a sergeant or a private. They've all been punished.
WALLACE: Would you regard the kinds of things that were alleged by ICRC and the FBI agent -- would you regard those as torture?
RUMSFELD: The first thing I would say is that it was the ICRC that at one point, I believe, said that it is tantamount to torture, as you quoted, to keep people in jail without...
WALLACE: Yes, but I'm not asking about that.
RUMSFELD: ...I'm telling you, though -- without telling them when they're going to get out. Do I think that's torture? No.
WALLACE: Do you think this is torture?
RUMSFELD: I think anyone who is beaten is -- call it what you want, it's a beating. And it shouldn't happen. And people have been instructed to treat people humanely. And to the extent it has happened, people have been punished and convicted in a court martial, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
So the idea that there's any policy of abuse or policy of torture is false. Flat false.
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So, first of all, Rummy never answered the question about whether he thought the incidents Senator Durbin spoke about on the senate floor were torture. He did imply that 50 officers, from Generals to PFC's, have been punished for stepping over the line. Should he be surprised that a line is being stepped over when he can't even PUBLICALLY state where that line is?