Marathon torture talks held in Cheney's office

[partylessinOhio]

Who is the Devil, I mean president?

White House, Senators Near Pact on Interrogation Rules
President Would Have a Voice in How Detainees Are Questioned

By R. Jeffrey Smith and Charles Babington
Friday, September 22, 2006

... Both sides declared that they had achieved their aims. Bush hailed the accord in a brief televised appearance from Orlando. He said the deal preserved "the CIA program to question the world's most dangerous terrorists and to get their secrets." CIA Director Michael V. Hayden told the agency in a statement that "if this language becomes law, the Congress will have given us the clarity and the support that we need to move forward with a detention and interrogation program." ...


Yesterday's final marathon talks occurred in Vice President Cheney's little-known office on the second floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. McCain, Graham and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.), plus Hadley and Steven G. Bradbury, acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, met almost continuously from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., the sources said, and then moved to Frist's office around 3 p.m. to announce their breakthrough. ...

The biggest hurdle, Senate sources said, was convincing administration officials that lawmakers would never accept language that allowed Bush to appear to be reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions. Once that was settled, they said, the White House poured most of its energy into defining "cruel or inhuman treatment" that would constitute a crime under the War Crimes Act. The administration wanted the term to describe techniques resulting in "severe" physical or mental pain, but the senators insisted on the word "serious."

Negotiations then turned to the amount of time that a detainee's suffering must last before the treatment amounts to a war crime. Administration officials preferred designating "prolonged" mental or physical symptoms, while the senators wanted something milder. They settled on "serious and non-transitory mental harm, which need not be prolonged." ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/21/AR2006092100298.html

[Solly Mack]

1. Wow

Just fucking wow

[ThomCat]

2. The amount of time someone must suffer before it's a warcrime?

Fuck you, republicans. How about even one simple second?

[ginnyinWI]

3. I think that * should test out the methods personally.

Then he'll have some "clarity" as to what constitutes torture or not. He can be the one to say how long each procedure may last by having the experience himself.

[peacebird]

4. I think every senator should have the "experience" before they vote

[Divernan]

6. Yeah, torture can last for as long as Bush or Cheney didn't scream stop!

And they can every single method tested on them first.

[jimshoes]

5. The shame I feel

that our supposed president has to arm twist our Senators, and those same Senators to capitulate to said arm twisting to allow him to re-write the laws on torture, to allow the use of torture, to define torture itself, to retroactively legalize torture, to decide who needs to be tortured, for how long and in what manner, that this debate even took place in The United States of America, is something I don't think I will ever be able to reconcile. This throwback to another, much darker era in human history must not be allowed to become the law of this land. If you don't know in your heart what human dignity is, if you need it explained to you, then you are lost. You are no longer a human being.

ed:sp

[MasonJar]

7. This is the nadir and our country may not deserve to survive. At

this point I am ashamed to be an American.

[restorefreedom]

8. i actually feel physically ill

upon reading this.

There is just nothing more to say.