The Washington Post has another excellent piece today on how the Bush administration exempted the CIA from the Rule of Law after 9/11. Bush issued edicts permitting the CIA “to maintain secret prisons abroad” and “to use interrogation methods that some lawyers say violate international treaties,” among other new powers.
John Radsan, assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002 to 2004, commented, “In the past, presidents set up buffers to distance themselves from covert action. But this president, who is breaking down the boundaries between covert action and conventional war, seems to relish the secret findings and the dirty details of operations.”
Did Bush play a role in choosing which prisoners would be subjected to waterboarding – “an interrogation technique in which a detainee is strapped to a board and pushed underwater to make him think he might drown” ? Did Bush personally decree which detainees would receive the harshest treatment?
Bush bragged shortly after 9/11 about using a baseball type scoring card to keep track of what types of “justice” U.S. forces had administered to Al Qaeda suspects. Did he also have an interrogation scorecard?
I trust the White House to speedily clear up these questions.
This is plain sad. We kidnap people and take them 100s of miles away.
Reminds me of Adolf’s Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) decree.