Democratic lawmakers are demanding that the White House turn over secret Justice Department memos authorizing harsh interrogation techniques. One opinion in May 2005 reportedly approved tactics including head-slapping, frigid temperatures, and simulated drowning. Bush administration officials said none of the documents signed off on anything that violated anti-torture laws. “This government does not torture people,” President Bush said Friday.
“Torture is back,” said The Philadelphia Inquirer in an editorial. “In fact, it never left the building.” As The New York Times reported, the Bush administration Justice Department issued a directive in 2004 “banning torture as ‘abhorrent,,” only to reverse itself a few months later. And Alberto Gonzalez—then freshly appointed, “now gone, thankfully”—“approved a legal opinion that government officials described to the Times as ‘an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.’" No wonder “the memo was kept secret until now.”
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