Legal memos permit President to side-step torture laws?

A Justice Department memo prepared for President Bush in 2002 "stated that the president's broad wartime national security authority may override anti-torture laws and treaties, including the Geneva Conventions, in certain circumstances," according to the Columbia Herald Tribune (MSNBC: here; Washington Post: here). In the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal this memo provides more evidence to those who believe that senior members of the administration ordered the abuses. Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to release the memo to the public or to the Senate committee investigating the abuses, but claimed that "this administration rejects torture ... I don't think it's productive, let alone justified." (FOX News: here)