THAT STORY: Almost all links that follow are via How Appealing.

MEMO ON INTERROGATION TACTICS IS DISAVOWED (Washington Post): President Bush’s aides yesterday disavowed an internal Justice Department opinion that torturing terrorism suspects might be legally defensible, saying it had created the false impression that the government was claiming authority to use interrogation techniques barred by international law.

Responding to pressure from Congress and outrage around the world, officials at the White House and the Justice Department derided the August 2002 legal memo on aggressive interrogation tactics, calling parts of it overbroad and irrelevant and saying it would be rewritten.

In a highly unusual repudiation of its department’s own work, a senior Justice official and two other high-ranking lawyers said that all legal advice rendered by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel on the subject of interrogations will be reviewed. …

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SPIRITED DEBATE PRECEDED POLICIES (Washington Post): …In December 2002, as Pentagon officials were trying to get detainees to offer more useful information about al Qaeda, Rumsfeld approved a variety of techniques, such as stripping prisoners to humiliate them, using dogs to scare them and employing stress positions to wear them down, the documents show. The tactics also included using light and sound assaults, shaving facial and head hair and taking away religious items.

Pentagon officials say most of the techniques were never used, and a Pentagon working group recommended that Rumsfeld roll back these methods. In a memo to the defense secretary in March 2003, the group wrote: “When assessing exceptional interrogation techniques, consideration should be given to the possible adverse affects on U.S. Armed Forces culture and self-image, which at times in the past may have suffered due to perceived law of war violations.”

As has been previously reported, Rumsfeld did subsequently rescind approval for the most aggressive tactics, including the use of dogs and stripping prisoners. But the documents released yesterday reveal many new details of the behind-the-scenes deliberations over what would be permitted at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, the holding facility for about 600 detainees picked up in the U.S. campaign against terrorists over the past three years.

For instance, during an initial Pentagon review of the tactics being used at Guantanamo, completed Nov. 27, 2002, Rumsfeld added a handwritten note to the bottom of a document in which he approved new interrogation techniques that included forcing prisoners to stand for four hours at a time. “However, I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?” …

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Lots and lots of relevant documents–almost all in PDF form, which often makes my computer freak out, so I won’t be able to read them until the working day is done. But that shouldn’t stop you all.

Yet more docs (and news articles) here.