Today at the Bush's Press Conference David Gregory asked the big question.
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Gregory: Mr. President, critics of your proposed bill on interrogation rules say that there is another important test. These critics include John McCain who you've mentioned several times this morning, And, that test is this, if a CIA officer, Special Operations Officer or Paramilitary Soldier from the United States were captured in Iran or North Korea, and they were roughed up, and those governments said, 'Well, they were interrogated within accordance of our interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, and then they were put on trial, and they were convicted based on secret evidence that they were not able to see. How would you react to that as Commander in Chief?
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Bush: Ummm, David my reaction is that if the nations such as those you named adopted the standards within the Detainee Detention Act the world would be better. We are trying to clarify law. We are trying to set high standards, not ambiguous standards.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Bush wants to legalize 'aggressive interrogation' of all prisoners including captured US Soldiers.
Bush goes on to have a nutty fit threatening to shut down this 'valuable program' if he doesn't get his bill, because he couldn't ask the young dedicated aggressive interrogators to break the law. In a truly bizarre comment he states that even if the interrogators are promised that they won't be prosecuted, it simply isn't fair to ask them to break the law, and he won't. I guess we are supposed to be impressed by this as some sort of principled stance. Anyway, it is clear that he wants to legalize these techniques period--all over the world.
They won't go into details about the techniques for 'national security' reasons, but it is safe to say that they include things like sleep depravation, being force to endure long periods in painful positions, different kinds of psycological manipulation, maybe even nasty stuff like waterboarding.
Bush wants to make all these practices legal worldwide. If an American soldier is captured--not just some highly trained Special Forces infiltrator--but any soldier that may have some information that his captors want, Bush wants to make it legal and appropriate treatment for him or her to be aggressively interrogated.
Let's say some pretty young blond female private was captured by the enemy. Someone that looked something like this:
Let's say that it was suspected that she knew something about truck schedules. Well, Bush wants to legalize the enemies right to do anything to her that we have done to those that we have captured.
Can you imagine how bonkers this nation and Bush would have gone if the Iraqis that captured Private Jessica Lynch had used any of these so called 'rough treatment' techniques on her.
But, Bush wants all that legalized--all over the world. He he has crossed the line and has authorized illegal treatment, so now he now wants to legalize it.
Bush wants legal cover for his actions, and in so doing he is willing to legalize what most would call torture all over the world, including to captured US soldiers, all of them, all over the world.
According to Bush, it would have been OK for Jessica Lynch to be roughed up. That the Iraqis would have been operating legally, within the bounds of our new fangled interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, if they had used the same techniques that Bush has authorized for use on our enemies.