Torture Turnaround

Stardate 5048.2

Just when we thought that Bush's acceptance of John McCain's addition of the no torture or inhumane treatment of prisoners to a contentious military policy Bill was a done deal, House and Senate negotiators agreed to a measure that would enable the government to keep prisoners at Guantanamo Bay indefinately on the basis of evidence obtained by coercive interrogations.

What this means is that evidence not permissable in civilian courts could be used to decide whether or not to detain prisoners at Gitmo Bay. The negotiators very quietly got rid of the ban on using this evidence in the original proposal from McCain. Basically, the new additions will render what McCain proposed unenforceable at Gitmo. So now the detainees have les rights than before it would seem...

It really looks as if the Administration is doing this because if they are not allowed to use evidence obtained through torture, then people can and will assume (or acknowledge) that in fact, prisoners are being tortured in US custody.