Notes From the War on Terror

NYT editorial

Notes From the War on Terror

For more than a year, President Bush has refused to honor legitimate requests from the Democratic majority in Congress for legal documents that he used to justify ordering the abuse, humiliation and torture of prisoners. This week, the Justice Department finally agreed to show some papers to members of the House and Senate.

Sounds like good news? Not so much.

For starters, it is not yet clear whether the White House will turn over the complete and unredacted opinions of the government lawyers that claimed the president could ignore the law and the Geneva Conventions.

Even if the documents are not censored, the Bush administration has agreed to give them only to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. It is withholding them from the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has supervisory power over the Justice Department and is charged with assessing the legality of government policies.

Finally, Mr. Bush continues to use a bogus claim of secrecy to keep the documents on torture from those who most need and deserve to see them — the public.

(Continued here.)