The US Justice Department advised the White House in August 2002 that torturing al-Qaeda detainees could be justified, according to a memo.
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/08/1086460294204.html

The memo suggests the Bush Administration was examining how far it could legally go in interrogating foreigners suspected of terrorism or having information that could thwart attacks.

It said that if a government employee were to torture a suspect, "he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the US by the al-Qaeda terrorist network", the Washington Post reported yesterday.

The memo also said that arguments based on "necessity and self-defence could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability" later, according to the Post.

The memo seems to counter the pre-September 11, 2001, assumption that US Government personnel would never be permitted to torture captives.

At that time, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked lawyers to examine the issues associated with interrogation. The two documents, both of which deal with the treatment of al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees, were not written to apply to Iraqi prisoners. The leaking of the August 2002 memo follows a Wall Street Journal report on Monday which said a classified March 2003 Pentagon report on interrogation concluded that the US president was not bound by laws prohibiting torture.

The Journal revealed that White House lawyers had prepared advice for Mr Rumsfeld arguing that Mr Bush could have the authority to override domestic and international laws against torture in the war on terror. According to the Journal, the draft advice argued that "because nothing is more important than 'obtaining information vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens', normal strictures on torture might not apply".

It is not known whether the advice was acted on, but White House and CIA lawyers have repeatedly told human rights organisations they were complying with the UN conventions against torture. A Pentagon spokesman said the paper was only a draft and interrogation rules approved by Mr Rumsfeld for Guantanamo Bay were "humane, legal and useful".

The March 2003 report was compiled by military lawyers after commanders at Guantanamo Bay complained that they were not getting enough information from prisoners using conventional methods, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Yesterday, human rights groups expressed dismay at the Justice Department's legal reasoning. "It is by leaps and bounds the worst thing I've seen since this whole Abu Ghraib scandal broke," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "It appears that what they were contemplating was the commission of war crimes..."