White House Says Prisoner Policy Set Humane Tone: "In a February 2002 directive that set new rules for handling prisoners captured in Afghanistan, President Bush broadly cited the need for 'new thinking in the law of war.' He ordered that all people detained as part of the fight against terrorism should be treated humanely even if the United States considered them not to be protected by the Geneva Conventions, the White House said Tuesday.
That statement of principle, which has been described publicly but never before released in its entirety, came at a time of intense debate within the Bush administration over how far the military and the intelligence agencies could and should go in using coercive interrogations and torture to extract information from detainees, administration officials said as they released hundreds of pages of previously classified documents related to the development of a policy on the detainees."
What is humane about the use of dogs, putting people in pain positions for 4 hours at a time, depriving people of sleep, beatings, and other coercive tactics?
The truth is that Rumsfeld did authorize the use of methods that constitute torture for a short time, and even now, the policies in use are very inhumane: they deliberately "ratchet up the pain". The White House is dissembling, pretending they are in favor of "humane" treatment.
- posted by geoff @ #