The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) today released their “Torture Database” website, making over 100,000 pages of government documents on the George W. Bush administration’s interrogation policies, primarily obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by the ACLU, searchable by the general public.

Alexander Abdo, a Staff Attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, announced the new database in a Guardian column today. Abdo wrote:

…[T]the government has yet to create a single, official report documenting the post 9/11 abuses. There is hope that the Senate Intelligence Committee will fill the void when it completes its long-expected report on the CIA’s program later this year. In the meantime, the ACLU today is launching the Torture Database to help fill the transparency gap. Our database allows researchers and the public to conduct sophisticated searches of thousands of documents relating to the Bush administration’s policies on rendition, detention, and interrogation.

Abdo and the ACLU hope the database will put pressure on the Obama administration to release more information about torture and other so-called enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) authorized during the Bush administration. “[The Obama administration] continues to withhold hundreds of CIA cables describing the use of waterboarding and other harsh techniques, hundreds of photographs of detainee abuse throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, and the presidential memorandum that authorized the CIA to establish its secret prisons overseas,” writes Abdo.

The database includes: Justice Department legal memos authorizing torture; autopsy reports completed by Army medical examiners after detainees died in U.S. custody; reports documenting and evaluating the interrogation practices of the military and CIA; and a series of email and correspondences “linking the CIA’s and military’s interrogation policies to officials at the highest levels of our government.”

While much of the database is dedicated to documents outlining torture and EITs, the ACLU emphasizes that the site also offers “inspiring and heroic stories” in the form of written dissents from soldiers, lawyers, officials and others as they resisted the interrogation policies approved by senior political leaders.

Criticism of the Obama administration’s drone program has heated up in recent weeks after the New York Times published a lengthy article highlighting some of its troubling aspects, particularly how and why suspected terrorists are targeted and the methods to which civilian casualties are documented. While many have since called for increased oversight of the program, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that Congress has been in the loop for more than two years:

The regular review of some of the most closely held [drone strike] video in the CIA’s possession is part of a marked increase in congressional attention paid to the agency’s targeted killing program over the last three years. The oversight, which has not previously been detailed, began largely at the instigation of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, officials said.

The lawmakers and aides with the intelligence oversight committees have a level of access shared only by President Obama, his top aides and a small number of CIA officials.

In addition to watching video, the legislative aides review intelligence that was used to justify each drone strike. They also sometimes examine telephone intercepts and after-the-fact evidence, such as the CIA’s assessment of who was hit.

In response to a Los Angeles Times piece questioning the drone program, Feinstein wrote the paper saying top intelligence officials in Congress “receive notification with key details shortly after every strike,” adding:

“Committee staff has held 28 monthly in-depth oversight meetings to review strike records and question every aspect of the program including legality, effectiveness, precision, foreign policy implications and the care taken to minimize noncombatant casualties.”

Two top United Nations human rights officials recently criticized the Obama administration for the drone program’s lack of transparency and accountability and questioned its legality.

The Los Angeles Times reports that “the drone program is under far more scrutiny than in the past” and participants in the congressional briefings “say their review has made the CIA more careful.” “I don’t know that we’ve ever seen anything that we thought was inappropriate,” one senior intelligence committee staff member said.

A New America Foundation analysis found a 17 percent “non-militant fatality rate” in drone strikes in Northwest Pakistan since 2004 and ProPublica recently reported that the administration’s claims on civilian casualties “do not add up.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has seen the drone strike videos and told the Los Angeles Times that he wasn’t convinced that every person killed has been a militant but added, “If the American people were sitting in the room, they would feel comfortable that it was being done in a responsible way.”

Fox News host Sean Hannity, during an interview with Liz Cheney, cited an allegedly faked interview with newly elected Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi in an attempt to attack President Obama for supporting Egypt’s first free election.

Morsi raised eyebrows with the alleged interview on Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency by saying Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel needed to be reevaluated and calling for robust ties to Iran. But it turns out the whole interview — supposedly only hours before election results were announced — might have been faked.

Fars duped some international news outlets, like Reuters, which scrubbed the original story and issued a new story where a top Morsi aid denied that he was even interviewed by Fars.

The reissued Reuters story came out just after 5 p.m., nearly four full hours before Hannity’s show took the airwaves. But that didn’t stop the right-wing host from citing the disputed interview:

HANNITY: But just who is this administration relieved to have as the Egypt’s next leader? Well, for starters. He’s no ally of Israel. Morsi in the past has called Israelis, quote, “vampires and killers.”

And today in an interview with an Iranian news agency, he is quoted as saying he intends to reconsider the Camp David accord. Yet despite these outrageous comments, the White House is relieved?

Watch the video:

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, of which Morsi was formerly a leader, has said it would, according to the AP, “seek changes to Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel without canceling it.” Furthermore, in his first speech after being declared president, Morsi announced: “We will preserve all national and international agreements” — a clear nod to the Israeli peace deal. And the White House was “relieved” not because the Muslim Brotherhood won a free election, but because last week it looked as if Egypt’s transition to democracy might be faltering under the weight of a soft-coup by transitional military leaders.

Fox News even reported hours before Hannity’s show that “a Morsi spokesman denied he did an interview with the Iranian news service who quotes Morsi promising to renew ties between the two countries.”

At RFE/RL, Golnaz Esfandiari pointed out that even fellow Iranian state media got in on the action of doubting the veracity of the Fars interview. So Hannity was duped by the Iranian propaganda even longer than the Iranian government itself.

Bush Administration Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today couldn’t give a definitive answer when asked how Mitt Romney’s foreign policy would differ from President Obama’s. On CBS this morning, host Charlie Rose pressed Rice — who has endorsed Romney for president — on the issue, but Rice responded only with platitudes about more understanding and “greater freedom”:

ROSE: Will his foreign policy be different from the foreign policy of President Obama?

RICE: What Mitt Romney will bring to the presidency — and I believe he will be a very good president — is that he will bring first and foremost an understanding of the role the United States has to play in the world.

He understands the essence of an America that believes in free markets and free peoples that has really been the reason the world has been moving toward greater prosperity and greater freedom.

He understands that we need to reassure our friends that indeed we’re going to be with them and that our foes have to respect and indeed fear us. He has those principles and those values and he’ll be very good on the foreign policy stage.

Watch the clip:

Indeed, behind the scenes, Romney’s foreign policy looks like it is shaking up to be George W. Bush part two. However, in public, the former Massachusetts governor seems apprehensive about diverting too far from Obama. As the Los Angeles Times noted last month, “for all his criticisms of the president, it has been difficult to tell exactly what Romney would do differently” on foreign policy.