In a last ditch effort to salvage the WTO meeting in Hong Kong, rich countries are trying to buy their way to a face-saving deal.

This round of trade negotiations is called the Doha Development Round for a reason – because it is supposed to be about alleviating poverty in the developing world. But instead of trying to create a real agreement that would be true to this name – rich countries have failed to bring anything meaningful to the table.

So now, with the meeting on the verge of collapse, trade negotiators spent most of the day madly scrambling to cobble together what they are calling a “development package.”

In the proposed “development package” ministers from rich countries pledged to increase so-called “aid for trade” grants. While these commitments are welcome, they are simply an effort by rich countries – the U.S., EU, Japan – to prevent the round from completely falling apart. Speaker after speaker from developing countries warned the conference (and expressed their frustration in private conversations) that aid-for-trade was a supplement, and not a substitute, for meaningful reform of the dysfunctional global trading system. Read more

Last night on Fox News, Brit Hume argued that waterboarding – an interrogation technique dating back to the Inquisition in which the prisoner “has water poured over him to make him think he is about to drown” – does not constitute torture:

Torture has an actual definition, and it means extreme physical pain, it also means the kind of thing associated with the failure of your organs. Now waterboarding is hair-raising and frightening, terrifying as it obviously is, would not appear to fit that category.

(Watch in Quicktime)

The Justice Department has explicitly rejected Hume’s “definition” of torture. In a 2002 memo, then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales argued that to be defined as torture, punishments “must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel later revised this definition, but Hume apparently never got the memo.

Also, former torture victim Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) disagrees:

For instance, there has been considerable press attention to a tactic called “waterboarding” “¦ In my view, to make someone believe that you are killing him by drowning is no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank. I believe that it is torture, very exquisite torture.

To send a signal to Hume and right-wingers that this kind of “exquisite torture” should stop, take action.

[Our guest blogger, Patrick Leahy (D-VT), is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.]

The Bush’s Administration’s tendencies to unilateralism – aided and abetted by conservative leaders in Congress – have produced some of the worst decisions, scandals and excesses of the last four years.

It’s happening again with the rewrite of the USA PATRIOT Act, but you may not be aware of the details. Read more

With Congress on the verge of passing the sweeping McCain amendment, the Bush administration has taken its drive to permit torture to new depths.

The basis of the McCain amendment is establishing the Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation as the uniform standard for interrogation. That manual explicitly prohibits the use of so-called “coercive interrogation techniques.” As former Army interrogator Peter Bauer has written, “the standard interrogation techniques found in the US Army Field Manual 34-52 were far more effective than such abusive behavior as stress positions, sensory deprivation, and humiliation. We obtained more information – and more reliable information – with our basic skills than we did with even days of harsh treatment.”

Realizing this, the Pentagon has one-upped McCain, and simply rewritten the manual:

The Army has approved a new, classified set of interrogation methods that may complicate negotiations over legislation proposed by Senator John McCain to bar cruel and inhumane treatment of detainees in American custody, military officials said Tuesday.

The techniques are included in a 10-page classified addendum to a new Army field manual that was forwarded this week to Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence policy, for final approval, they said.

The addendum provides dozens of examples and goes into exacting detail on what procedures may or may not be used, and in what circumstances. Army interrogators have never had a set of such specific guidelines that would help teach them how to walk right up to the line between legal and illegal interrogations.

The political fall-out from this move is sure to be significant. The New York Times notes that McCain will likely be “furious” with the changes, and an unnamed Pentagon official is quoted, “This is a stick in McCain’s eye. It goes right up to the edge. He’s not going to be comfortable with this.”

The idea that we have a “Vice President for Torture” now appears quaint. What we really have is an entire administration, openly and unapologetically for torture.