War on Terror Follies

We're confused. We don't torture.

President Bush, rebuffing international criticism of a secret U.S. prison system abroad for terrorism suspects, said today he will continue to "aggressively pursue" terrorists and insisted that "any activity we conduct" in that effort is lawful and does not include torture.

So what's this about?

Over the past year, Vice President Cheney has waged an intense and largely unpublicized campaign to stop Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department from imposing more restrictive rules on the handling of terrorist suspects, according to defense, state, intelligence and congressional officials.

These guys must have been in protective custody.

Three Yemeni nationals who were arrested in late 2003 say they were transferred to U.S. custody and kept isolated in at least four secret detention facilities that Amnesty International officials believe could be part of a covert CIA prison system.
The three detainees have not said they were physically abused while in U.S. custody, but they describe being whisked away in airplanes to unknown locations where they were interrogated by Americans in civilian clothes, according to an Amnesty International report. At one prison, the detainees were guarded by people in all-black "ninja" suits, who communicated using hand gestures.

In Japan, apparently.
UPDATE: This is a debate that shouldn't even be happening in America. Torture is immoral. Torture doesn't yield reliable intelligence. And until this administration, at least, torture was illegal. Jane Mayer explains how the sadistic bastards have defined torture down to the point where even killing a guy won't get anyone prosecuted. And Fareed Zakaria says the United States won't regain its international reputation as an advocate for human rights until it ends.