TV News LIES

The United States must prosecute former President George W. Bush for torture if his admission in a memoir that he authorized waterboarding holds true, rights group Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

In "Decision Points," published this week, Bush defended his decision to authorize waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning condemned by some as torture.
Bush said the practice was limited to three detainees and led to intelligence breakthroughs that thwarted attacks and saved lives. He told NBC in an interview to publicize the book that his legal adviser had told him it did "not fall within the anti-torture act."

Three British soldiers are being investigated by military lawyers over the alleged abuse of an Iraqi detainee, a court has been told. They have been referred to prosecutors and could face war crimes charges.

The High Court is being asked to order a public inquiry into mistreatment claims by more than 200 civilians in UK-controlled detention sites in Iraq. A government lawyer revealed the ongoing inquiry as he argued that a public probe was unnecessary.

The United States submitted Friday at the United Nations to unprecedented public scrutiny of its human rights record, drawing censure from friends and rivals for its policies on detention and the death penalty, but also praise from allies for its candor and willingness to accept constructive criticism.

A delegation of top officials, led by Assistant Secretary of State Esther Brimmer, gave diplomats at the U.N. Human Rights Council a detailed account of U.S. human rights shortcomings and the Obama administration's efforts to redress them. It marked the first time the United States has subjected its rights record to examination before the Geneva-based council, as part of a procedure that requires all states to allow their counterparts to grade their conduct.

Gaza "the giant open prison" are not the words of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president. Nor were they scripted by Hamas' Khaled Mishaal or Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas. They belong to David Cameron, the young and charismatic British prime minister.

Since the imposition of the Gaza blockade nearly four years ago, no single European leader has voiced moral outrage over the sanctions with such alacrity, simplicity and forcefulness. His words have reverberated widely in Gaza as well as elsewhere in the Arab world.

Human rights experts have long pressed the administration of former president George W. Bush for details of who bore ultimate responsibility for approving the simulated drownings of CIA detainees, a practice that many international legal experts say was illicit torture.

In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.

Daniel Pines, an assistant general counsel at the CIA, has asserted in a law journal that the abduction of terrorism suspects abroad is legal under U.S. law, even when the suspect is turned over to countries notorious for torture. “There are virtually no legal restrictions on these types of operations,” Pines asserts in the current edition of the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal.

“Indeed, U.S. law does not even preclude the United States from rendering individuals to a third country in instances where the third country may subject the rendered individual to torture. The only restrictions that do exist under U.S. law preclude U.S. officials from themselves torturing or inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on individuals during rendition operations, or rendering individuals from a place of actual armed conflict or occupation -- all of which prove to be narrow limitations indeed,” Pines writes.