More Torture News from the Evil Empire

Back in the days, not all that long ago, when the American Empire was at least pretending to still be a free republic, this sort of thing would have resulted in huge outcry against the perpetrators. I predict that this will be received by the subjects of the Evil Empire with a shrug instead of the outrage it clearly calls for. Torture is torture, no matter what the scum working for the emperor call it. Slavery is Freedom, War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength. 1984 is here in full bloom today.

New York Times

October 4, 2007

Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations [Torture]

By SCOTT SHANE, DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

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