"Torture" vs. Torture. When asked at his late April press conference how he would justify renditioning—sending terror suspects to third countries for interrogation and possibly torture—George W. Bush answered, "That's a hypothetical. We operate within the law, and we send people to countries where they say they're not going to torture the people." Only it's not hypothetical. One of those countries is Egypt, where, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch, more than 60 Islamist militants have been brought, often by the US, since 1994. “Sending suspects to a country where they are likely to be tortured is strictly prohibited under international law,” said Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch. “Egypt’s terrible record of torturing prisoners means that no country should forcibly send a suspect there... The Bush administration knows full well that Egypt tortures people in custody, and that its promises not to torture a given suspect are not worth the paper they’re written on. This fig leaf doesn’t hide U.S. complicity in the terrible abuses that await suspects sent to Egypt.”

Of course, maybe it all depends on how you define torture. This week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez gave the opinion that much of the recently publicized abuses are not legally torture. "Torture, as a matter of prosecution, is defined by Congress as the intentional infliction of severe physical and mental pain or suffering. Congress intended a very high bar here in order to be prosecuted for engaging in torture. There may be conduct that you may find offensive that falls far short of torture." Of course, Gonzalez wrote the 2002 memo that said the war on terror "renders obsolete" the Geneva Conventions that prohibit torture, so naturally he's going to set that bar incredibly high. (Via TruthOut.)

With friends like these: Seven months before terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the State Department decried Uzbekistan for its hideous track record of torture. It said the police were guilty of "beating [detainees], often with blunt weapons, and asphyxiation with a gas mask," and human rights groups reported atrocities in Uzbek jails including pulling fingernails out with pliers, using electric shocks on genitals, and, on two occasions, boiling inmates to death. Today, Uzbekistan is a favored partner in the US war on terror. It's received more than $500 million in US anti-terror money and is allegedly one of countries the US sends suspected terrorists for "interrogation."