That's the headline on this
just published AP article.
The first 'graph is a winner:
President Bush claimed the right to waive anti-torture laws and treaties covering prisoners of war after the invasion of Afghanistan, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized guards to strip detainees and threaten them with dogs, according to documents released Tuesday.
Couple this with an article published earlier today about the AP taking the Pentagon and the Air Force to court for Bush's military records (
diaried here) and you might think the AP had it in for Georgie.
Bush claimed the right to waive the Geneva convention in a 50 page document dated August 1, 2002 and released by the White House today. But this release of memos does not provide the smoking gun to indict the Bush admin. In a later document:
Bush had outlined his own views in a Feb. 7. 2002, document regarding treatment of al-Qaida detainees from Afghanistan. He said the war against terrorism had ushered in a "new paradigm" and that terrorist attacks required
"new thinking in the law of war." Still, he said prisoners must be treated humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.
"I accept the legal conclusion of the attorney general and the Department of Justice that I have the authority under the Constitution to suspend Geneva as between the United States and Afghanistan, but I decline to exercise that authority at this time," the president said in the memo, entitled "Humane Treatment of al-Qaida and Taliban Detainees."
The later memo is undoubtedly meant to provide plausible deniability for George. The question of Iraqi detainees is not addressed by the docs cited in the AP article.
The documents release today also include Pentagon memoranda tied to Don Rumsfeld and the statement that the Department of Justice would now take action:
At the Justice Department, senior officials said that the 50-page memo issued to the White House on Aug. 1, 2002, would be repudiated and replaced.
Is this not a tacit admission of guilt?