This is a good flip-flop: The President's Stance on Torture is now that he's against it. Nice to see that public outrage can still achieve something.
Heartbreaking that it takes massive public outrage just to keep the (official) anti-torture status quo.
Ain’t we quaint?
Aha. But it depends on how we define “torture,” doesn’t it? They haven’t flip-flopped.
It’s a flip-flop by any definition. It’s a direct contradiction of the administration’s pro-torture position a few days ago.
I really like the new position; I just wish I believed it.
BTW, the way the Justice Department spokesman responded in the WaPo article (“We can’t comment on any specific provision, but we support those provisions that will better secure our borders and protect the American people from terrorists.”) was a prime example of weasel words. Translated, that means “We support all the good stuff but we can’t tell you what the good stuff is.”
Its not a flip-flop. Its just a lie, unless there’s an intention to actually cease deportations to countries that torture. And look at the source! Its from “the Judge,” and if we’re all not careful this kind of nonsense will end up on SCOTUS someday. Says the Washington Post, of “the Judge”:
he has left a clear stamp on his office by providing Bush with the legal grounding for an aggressive assertion of executive authority in disputes with Congress and of government power in the war on terrorism.
“We push the envelope, but never beyond what the Constitution permits, in my judgment,” Gonzales said in a rare interview…
here’s the link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A7019-2003May18¬Found=true
Same article tells you we’ll only get to figure out what the guy really thinks when he shows up on Scotus….wonderful.
The fact is, if you watch Gonzalez closely, you’ll see he’s the same Bush bosom buddy that in 2002 told POTUS he could ignore our treaty obligations under the third geneva convention with respect to anyone detained in the war in Afghanistan. This was the man who, in the same job in the Texas government, supported 57 separate executions pushed by GWB in memorandum form while, as Alan Berlow said in the Atlantic Monthly, “Gonzales emphasized the grotesqueness of the crimes while often skipping over important points of law that needed to be taken into consideration.” This is the man that specifically requested the Bybee memo saying, and then continued to regurgitate, “for an act to constitute torture as defined in 18 U.S.C. 2340, it must inflict pain that is difficult to endure, equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death”
So when he says “we’ve always told you we don’t torture or support anyone who does,” sure, believe him. Be happy. But understand that his definition of torture only includes the infliction of pain equivalent to the explosion of one’s heart. Or kidney. And if something doesn’t fit his definition? Well, we just ignore it.
Many thanks, Christopher Chopin, for backing me up here! My recollection of the torture memos was that the definition of torture was so narrow that Gonzalez could–without lying (but clearly with the conscience of a rattlesnake)–say that we did not support torture or regimes that supported torture.
Remember when Bush said “We have laws. We’re a nation of laws. That should comfort you.” (Or something like that). And our reactions were of howling contempt because we replied “Easy for you to say, Bud. You’ve just redefined the laws at your convenience.” Truly these folks are so slippery that they could teach Clinton lessons, and that’s saying something. I’ll believe Bush has flipped-flopped on this if and when he tells us what he means by “torture.”
Please write your Senators and urge them to keep the Senate version of the Sept. 11 reforms bill free of the many garbage provisions that the House version contains. Particularly Republican Senators; cite the opposition of the Sept. 11 commissioners to the extra, undermining provisions and this indication of White House support for a clean bill that sticks to the recommendations the commissioners actually made. (Of course the Gonzales letter doesn’t mean the Bush admin really wants that; Bush’s Brain wants exactly what Hastert and DeLay are producing: a poison pill vote for House Democrats. )