Very cute effort by the White House to clear Bush of having ordered the Abu Ghraib tortures. Note what White House counsel said:
White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales said in a May 21 interview with The Washington Post: 'Anytime a discussion came up about interrogations with the president, . . . the directive was, 'Make sure it is lawful. Make sure it meets all of our obligations under the Constitution, U.S. federal statutes and applicable treaties.'Now remember that the head of the Justice Dept's Office of Legal Counsel wrote a memo saying that US law and international law may not even cover the president's decisions as they pertain to interrogations conducted in the pursuance of war. That memo means that Bush could have directly ordered the torture at Abu Ghraib and still, technically, be "meeting our obligations under the Constitution, U.S. federal statues and applicable treaties" since none of those laws applied to him anyway, so he definitely "met" his obligation under them.
Very cute way for Gonzalez to say the truth, yet say nothing at all. Tomorrow at the White House we debate the definition of "is."
