Now that President Bush has agreed to back John McCain’s torture ban, house
rep. Duncan Hunter has some problems with it, leading to another hurdle. Hunter
apparently wants some sort of assurances put into the bill that will protect
soldiers from criminal and civil penalties if they do engage in torture. This
sounds like an effort to make torture a no-no but more or less a “just don’t get
caught doing it” type deal.

The President’s turn around on supporting the torture amendment shocked
Washington today. It was a total 180 from his previous stance where he was
threatening to open his unused veto pen to knock the measure down. Perhaps his
change of heart comes from the 10 new classified pages added to the Army Field
Manual:

It’s reported that the Army is forwarding a classified addendum to the
new Army Field Manual on interrogation operations. According to these
reports, the 10-page addendum provides dozens of examples of what procedures
may and may not be used by interrogators, and it informs commanders on the
circumstances for their employment.

This move amounts to an attempt by the Army to use the back door to
establish secret interrogation techniques at the same time the new Field
Manual on interrogation operations is coming out (later this month). It
sends exactly the wrong message to the world and, more important, fosters
the same kind of confusion and contradictory policies that have contributed
to the abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

View complete article

here.

They are saying those pages don’t have “secret rules” on torture, but how
does anyone know when the pages are classified. Perhaps we need another leak to
make sure the administration is not trying some dirty loop-hole to get around
the torture ban.