New Evidence Prison Torture Was Approved at Top Levels

"A classified Pentagon report, providing a series of legal arguments apparently intended to justify abuses and torture against detainees, appears to undermine public assurances by senior U.S. officials, including President George W. Bush, that the military would never resort to such practices in the ''war on terrorism''.
Short excerpts of the report, which was drafted by Defence Department lawyers, were published in the Wall Street Journal Monday. The text asserts, among other things, that the president, in his position as commander-in-chief, has virtually unlimited power to wage war, even in violation of U.S. law and international treaties.
''The breadth of authority in the report is wholly unprecedented,'' says Avi Cover, a senior attorney with the U.S. Law and Security programme of Human Rights First, formerly known as Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.
''Until now, we've used the rhetoric of a president who is 'above the law', but this document makes that (assertion) explicit; it's not a metaphor anymore,'' he added.
While it is unknown whether Bush himself ever saw or approved the report, it was classified ''secret'' by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld on Mar. 6, 2003, the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to the Journal."