President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.
“Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people.” Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. “And yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.”
As first reported by ABC News Wednesday, the most senior Bush administration officials repeatedly discussed and approved specific details of exactly how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the CIA.
The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.
These top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding, sources told ABC news… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <ABC>
The GOP spin on this is that Bush is not responsible, because he was insulated from the details of what was being discussed. From there, they will fall back on their flawed position that anything the President does is legal by definition, changing their tune considerably from when they impeached Clinton for lying about a BJ. This is a direct admission that he committed a high crime, and failure to impeach on this basis is congressional dereliction.
Cross-posted from Politics Plus
