Washington - Several US lawmakers Wednesday accused the Bush administration on Wednesday of allowing torture after the Justice Department released a 2003 memo exempting the military from federal laws against assault and other crimes. The Justice Department declassified and released the 81-page memorandum. The existence of the memo has been known and reported on for years, but Tuesday marked the first time it has been made publicly available.
The memo was in effect for nine months before the Justice Department instructed the Pentagon to stop using it for guidance.
The department had determined that President George W Bush's war- time authority overode laws protecting people from harmful treatment during interrogations, giving the US military the right to physically abuse al-Qaeda detainees in the war on terrorism.
Prominent Democrats have seized on the memo's release to charge the White House with ignoring US law at the cost of American credibility around the world.
The "news that the Justice Department gave legal cover to the military to use torture and other cruel and inhuman interrogation techniques shocks the conscience," Senator Joseph Biden, the chairman of the chamber's Foreign Relations Committee, said.
"This memo created the lawless atmosphere that led directly to the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib," Biden said in a statement. "Those who wrote it and those who approved it should be held accountable."
The memo was sent to the Pentagon on March 14, 2003 by John C Yoo, who at the time was a deputy in the department's Office of Legal Counsel. His conclusions said Bush had far reaching powers in the war on terrorism.
"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al-Qaeda terrorist network," the memo said.
Senator Edward Kennedy called on the White House to repudiate the memo, which he believes increases the risk US soldiers will be tortured if captured by the enemy.
This memorandum underscores how this administration abandoned the rule of law, and adopted arguments that could be used by other nations to try to justify the torture of American troops," he said.
"To protect our own soldiers, this administration needs to repudiate not merely withdraw these shameful and shoddy arguments," Kennedy added.
