At a news conference in Panama today, President George W. Bush asserted that “we [the United States] does not torture” and stated that the US government is acting out of its “obligation to protect the American people.” Bush’s assertion came amidst widespread evidence to the contrary and news that five more US soldiers are being charged with abusing detainees in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney, who previously sought an exemption for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from any Congressional ban on torture, is still playing a pivotal role in determining the Bush administration’s position on torture. A major article in Sunday’s edition of the Washington Post described Cheney’s aggressive efforts to prevent Congress, the State Department, and the Pentagon from developing rules that would restrict how terrorism suspects are treated. Cheney argues that the United States needs the ability to treat detainees harshly and that the information gained from such interrogations has proven valuable in the past, despite new revelations that intelligence gained from one such suspect was known to be fabricated yet still formed the basis for many Bush administration arguments in favor of invading Iraq. As recently as last week Cheney advocated for exemptions that would cover the CIA’s secret detention bases in Eastern Europe.

It is also worth noting that since September 11, 2001, the CIA has had nearly carte blanche to treat detainees however they want and have often engaged in cruel interrogation tactics that nearly kill detainees. No one working for the CIA has been charged for abuse of treatment of detainees, including one incident in which an Iraqi detainee was killed at the hands of a CIA employee.