Bottom line: so far so good for the administration. I haven’t been able to peruse all the documents but I will wait for other journalists with access to summarize them in time. When I said yesterday that I was relieved that Bush had spoken out so forcefully against torture, I simply meant that I was glad that it was not now official policy. But it still isn’t clear that we have all the truly relevant memos. And Gonzalez’s statement yesterday was also troubling:
“We’re going to be aggressive in our interrogations. There’s no question about that,” Gonzales said. He insisted that the United States would not engage in torture and said the administration uses the definition of torture provided by Congress as “a specific intent to inflict severe physical or mental harm or suffering.”
This still leaves open the possibility of the infliction of “severe physical or mental harm” if the “specific intent” is to gain information. But in general, the Rumsfeld decisions in both December 2002 and April 2003 do indeed appear to exonerate him from approving the worst options. The only technique he approved that is directly linked to the Abu Ghraib horrors is the use of dogs to terrify inmates. Bush’s decision to maintain Geneva rules is also heartening. But this story is not yet over. And more will emerge.
THE GOOD NEWS FROM IRAQ: Arthur Chrenkoff offers another essential summary of where we now are. Why, one wonders, couldn’t a mainstream newspaper produce something like this?
REAGAN’S HUMOR: Here’s a classic from a wonderful essay by Edmund Morris in the new New Yorker:
Perhaps the best of Reagan’s one-liners came after he attended his last ceremonial dinner, with the Knights of Malta in New York City on January 13, 1989. The evening’s m.c., a prominent lay Catholic, was rendered so emotional by wine that he waved aside protocol and followed the President’s speech with a rather slurry one of his own. It was to the effect that Ronald Reagan, a defender of the rights of the unborn, knew that all human beings begin life as “feces.” The speaker cited Cardinal John O’Connor (sitting aghast nearby) as “a fece” who had gone on to greater things. “You, too, Mr. President – you were once a fece!”
En route back to Washington on Air Force One, Reagan twinklingly joined his aides in the main cabin. “Well,” he said, “that’s the first time I’ve flown to New York in formal attire to be told I was a piece of shit.”
LOL.
The Dish 