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"Watch what I say, not what I do." More hot air from John Ashcroft (WSJ, sub. req'd.):

Under sharp questioning from Democratic senators, Attorney General John Ashcroft reiterated Bush administration claims that it doesn't allow prisoners to be tortured to extract information.

But he also refused to release internal policy documents that assert the president's power to disregard laws and international conventions prohibiting torture.

[...]

When pressed by Sen. Edward Kennedy to say whether he agreed with the conclusions of the internal legal memo, Mr. Ashcroft declared that "first of all, this administration rejects torture."

But, of course, "...he declined to say what advice he has given the president or the Pentagon on the topic."

The administration says what it thinks we want to hear in public and disregards laws and international conventions in private, secreting all evidence of its actual attitudes and behavior. The precedent of flagrant lawlessness was set when Dick Cheney allowed campaign contributor and Enron chairman Ken Lay to determine national energy policy, six months before 9-11-01. And everything the administration has done since then, from the tax cuts to the Medicare bill to the environmental policies to the whopper, the Iraq invasion, furthers the pattern.

{ 10:20 AM }

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