04/09/05

The Bush administration hasn't tried very hard to keep its torture-by-proxy program a secret. That's because the administration's torture lawyers, such as John Yoo, former deputy to Alberto Gonzales and now a law professor at Berkeley, argue that the administration is free to breach international and domestic laws in its pursuit of suspected terrorists. While working for the Bush administration, Yoo drafted a legal memo, which set the framework for the rendition program. He argued that the US was not bound by the Geneva Accords (or US prohibitions on torture) in its pursuit of al-Qaeda members or Taliban soldiers because Afghanistan was 'a failed state' and therefore not subject to the protections of the anti-torture laws. The detainees were slotted into a newly created category called 'illegal enemy combatants,' a legal rubric which treated them as subhumans lacking all basic human rights...

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair04092005.html

from CounterPunch, by Jeffrey St. Clair


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp