Bush did not support the anti-torture amendment offered by McCain--in

[rodeodance]

fact he had threatened to veto it. I was on vacation last last and missed all of this. This is a terrible message to send to our troops in the field--bad message to send abroad-that our Presidend did not support this amendment. Makes me sick.


I got this an an email today:

American Progress Action Fund wrote:
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=914257&ct=1258291

> HUMAN RIGHTS
> Going Nowhere In Gitmo
>
> Nearly four years ago, the White House made a decision to keep terrorism suspects at a prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It wanted to ensure it could operate outside of national and international law. Today, 500-plus detainees from 40 countries are still being held at the prison; many have been there over three years. In all that time, only four have been charged with a crime. Graphic reports of brutal abuse have seeped out of the prison; many of the same torturous interrogation techniques also spread to the now infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. And according to one former FBI official, mistreating detainees may be backfiring. “Doing these things just makes them more determined to hate us. And eventually they are going to be released. When they are, they’re going to talk and exaggerate what happened to them. They’re going to become heroes. So then we’ll have more extremist networks and more suicide bombers.”
>
> KILL THE BILL:Military veteran Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham tried to stop the abuse of detainees. They drafted a set of amendments to the recent Defense Department budget which would mandate that the U.S. military follow its own rules for interrogating prisoners. The language of the amendment, which would prohibit the “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone in U.S. custody, was modeled on the U.S.-ratified U.N. Convention Against Torture. President Bush not only refused to support the anti-torture amendment, he threatened to veto the entire $491 billion defense bill if the amendment barring the torture of prisoners was attached. (The bill has been shelved until September.)
>
> FIRST DO NO HARM:New reports – including ones from the Pentagon – have surfaced indicating military officials at Guantanamo Bay are using American doctors to craft specialized abuse strategies to use against detainees. In fact, “U.S. military physicians, psychiatrists, and psychologists have used detainee medical records to capitalize on illness, phobias and other vulnerabilities to devise strategies to elicit information from detainees.” Misuse of medical expertise to abuse prisoners is in direct opposition to international law. As Jane Mayer points out in the New Yorker, the Geneva Convention specifically forbids subjecting a prisoner of war “to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind.” And the World Medical Association –which includes the American Medical Association –bars medical personnel from participating in torture or abuse in any way. The Center for American Progress is hosting a panel today to examine the role of military medical professionals in the interrogation process.
>
> MILLER LET THE DOGS OUT, GETS AWAY WITH IT: Another serious charge of abuse is the use of attack dogs against defenseless prisoners. The barbaric practice was first used against detainees at Guantanamo Bay. According to the former warden of the prison at Abu Ghraib, Maj. David Dinenna, it was then exported to Iraq under the recommendation of Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller during a visit he made to Iraq in 2003. And according to Dinenna, the blame goes all the way to the top: “We understood that he was sent over by the secretary of defense,” he testified. After months of study, military investigators in July recommended that, in light of the ongoing abuse of detainees at the prison in Guantanamo, Miller should be “reprimanded for failing to oversee his interrogation.” The Defense Department, however, refused. Immediately Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command, overruled their recommendation. So far, “no officer of Miller’s rank or higher has been officially admonished in connection with any of the abuse scandals.”
>
> “FRAUD ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE”: The White House wants to keep trials of the detainees out of the American legal system, instead using military tribunals. According to two former Air Force prosecutors, Maj. John Carr and Maj. Robert Preston those tribunals are rigged both resigned rather than take part. As Maj. Preston wrote in an e-mail to his superiors, "I consider the insistence on pressing ahead with cases that would be marginal even if properly prepared to be a severe threat to the reputation of the military justice system and even a fraud on the American people." The two complained in 2004 that fellow prosecutors were “ignoring torture allegations, failing to protect exculpatory evidence and withholding information from superiors.” In their submitted complaints, the officers charged the actions of the tribunal “may constitute dereliction of duty, false official statements or other criminal contacts.” Their complaints were ignored by the Pentagon. Last month, a three-judge federal court ruled the Bush administration's plan to convene military tribunals to try terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay was constitutional, overruling a lower court's opinion that the tribunals violated the Geneva Convention. The opinion of the court in that decision was joined by none other than Judge John Roberts, who days later became President Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court....

[tk2kewl]

1. Would you expect anything less than complete evil from the bastard

[Norquist Nemesis]

2. Yep! Frist shelved it and shoved the NRA protection bill instead n/t