"We do not Torture, We do not Torture, We do not Torture"

"Well, okay, maybe we torture some."

"I'm white, I'm really, really, white"

From AFP:

In an important clarification of President George W. Bush's earlier statement, a top White House official refused to unequivocally rule out the use of torture, arguing the US administration was duty-bound to protect Americans from terrorist attack.

...During a trip to Panama earlier this month, Bush said that Americans "do not torture."

However, appearing on CNN's "Late Edition" program, Hadley elaborated on the policy, making clear the White House could envisage circumstances, in which the broad pledge not to torture might not apply.

"The president has said that we are going to do whatever we do in accordance with the law," the national security adviser said. "But... you see the dilemma. What happens if on September 7th of 2001, we had gotten one of the hijackers and based on information associated with that arrest, believed that within four days, there's going to be a devastating attack on the United States?"

The problem of course is, twofold. First, there is the simple broadline that "civilized" societies long ago accepted that torture is immoral under any circumstances, as well as being ineffective (it works on TV and in the movies). The argument regarding "imminence" is weak in that that can justity torturing anybody you get in the short-term after you get them. Further, anyone else can use that rationale should they capture an American soldier -- even the grunts.

Second, we know quite well that the Bush Administration has authorized torture to be used in far less "extreme" situations than this.

CIA interrogators apparently tried to cover up the death of an Iraqi 'ghost detainee' who died while being interrogated at Abu Ghraib prison, Time magazine reported today, after obtaining hundreds of pages of documents, including an autopsy report, about the case.

The death of secret detainee Manadel al-Jamadi was ruled a homicide in a Defense Department autopsy, Time reported, adding that documents it recently obtained included photographs of his battered body, which had been kept on ice to keep it from decomposing, apparently to conceal the circumstances of his death.