US President George W. Bush on Friday forbade the CIA from torturing suspected terrorists in its once-secret detention and interrogation program but was criticized for his vague, "trust us" approach.
Human rights groups said the executive order left out critical details, such as controversial tactics that administration officials often describe as "enhanced interrogation techniques."
The order says that the detention program, whose existence was confirmed last September, must abide by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions on wartime detainees and requires the CIA director to enforce that standard.
It lists no specific practices that are affected, or punishments for violations, and does not describe in any further detail a secret CIA prison network that has drawn outrage from US allies in Europe.
Bush spokesman Tony Snow said the order barred "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" and "acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation and cruel and inhuman treatment."
"It also prohibits `willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts beyond the bounds of human decency,'" he said.
"And the order forbids acts intended to denigrate detainees' religion, religious practices or religious objects," Snow said.
However, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) slammed the order as "contrary to the Geneva Conventions" because it essentially affirmed CIA secret detentions, a program that is "illegal to its core," it said in a statement.
"The key aspect of this is all the parts that aren't said," said Jennifer Daskal, HRW senior counterterrorism counsel, who charged that the order allowed "a system of incommunicado detention to continue, with the blessing of the president."
"What we have here is an administration basically reciting a number of legal principles and saying `trust us.' And that's hard to take from an administration that refuses to renounce waterboarding," she said.
On a White House-organized conference call -- organized on the condition that the briefer not be named -- one senior Bush aide refused to discuss whether any detention or interrogation practices, or how many detainees, were affected.
He refused to discuss specifically the order's impact on "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is tied down and water is poured over the face or over a cloth stretched over the face, producing the sensation of drowning.
The aide also sidestepped a question about why sleep was not included in a section explicitly granting detainees "the basic necessities of life, including adequate food and water, shelter from the elements, necessary clothing, protection from extremes of heat and cold, and essential medical care."
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Xinyi A13 Department Store last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined at
EYE ON STRAIT: The US spending bill ‘doubles security cooperation funding for Taiwan,’ while also seeking to counter the influence of China US President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law a US$1.2 trillion spending package that includes US$300 million in foreign military financing to Taiwan, as well as funding for Taipei-Washington cooperative projects. The US Congress early on Saturday overwhelmingly passed the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act 2024 to avoid a partial shutdown and fund the government through September for a fiscal year that began six months ago. Under the package, the Defense Appropriations Act would provide a US$27 billion increase from the previous fiscal year to fund “critical national defense efforts, including countering the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” according to a summary
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)