That's what George Bush told the press Oct. 5 in response to the new torture memo revelations. Here's the full quote, from the AP:

"When we find somebody who may have information regarding a potential attack on America, you bet we're going to detain them, and you bet we're going to question them," he said during a hastily called appearance in the Oval Office. "The American people expect us to find out information, actionable intelligence so we can help protect them. That's our job."

Bush volunteered his thoughts on a report on two secret memos in 2005 that authorized extreme interrogation tactics against terror suspects. "This government does not torture people," the president said.

This is a case study in the propaganda trick identified by George Orwell in "Politics and the English Language" as "Meaningless Words":

The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive.

George Bush's great contribution to the age of propaganda is to add "torture" to the list of "meaningless words." Bush can say "This government does not torture people," because he has his own "private definition" of torture. This was made explicit in the Bybee Memo. The background and incriminating passages are in this analysis from Human Rights First, run in the February 2005 issue of Peacework:

The Torture Memos

In 2002, Mr. Gonzales asked the Office of Legal Counsel to prepare legal opinions on interrogation standards under the Convention against Torture as implemented by federal statute and binding international law obligations. The memo addressed to Gonzales (the "Bybee memo") served as the direct legal underpinning for harsh interrogation tactics employed on individuals detained by the United States in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and at Guantanamo Bay.

The Bybee memo reads largely like a roadmap to circumventing laws against torture. Yet it appears that no one involved in these deliberations, including Gonzales, had any misgivings about this legal opinion for nearly two years until it was publicly disclosed. The Bybee memo includes the following conclusions:

* "[F]or an act to constitute torture, it must inflict pain that is difficult to endure. Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

* "For purely mental pain or suffering to amount to torture, it must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years."

* "[E]ven if the defendant knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent even though the defendant did not act in good faith. Instead, a defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within his custody or physical control.

* "[U]nder the current circumstances, necessity or self-defense may justify interrogation methods that might violate Sections 2340A."

In response to the widespread criticism of the Bybee memo, the Department of Justice issued a new memo on December 30, 2004, stating that it superseded the Bybee memo in its entirety, in which the analysis directly addressing the definition of torture was ameliorated. The memo did not, however, address the OLC's earlier conclusions that necessity or self-defense might justify torture.

At the [confirmation] hearing, Senator Leahy asked [Attorney General appointee Alberto] Gonzales whether he agreed with the Bybee memo's conclusion that for an act to violate the torture statute, "it must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." Gonzales answered: "I don't recall today whether or not I was in agreement with all of the analysis, but I don't have a disagreement with the conclusions then reached by the department." Mr. Gonzales refused to disclose any documents related to that memo.

Senator Durbin asked Mr. Gonzales whether it was legally permissible for US personnel to engage in "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," stripping the prohibition on torture of much meaning as applied to non-citizens detained outside of the United States. Gonzales noted that the United States defines "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" as conduct prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and/or Fourteenth Amendments. Based on this reservation, Gonzales explained that the United States was "as a legal matter…in compliance" with the prohibition because "aliens interrogated by the US outside the United States enjoy no substantive rights under the Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments." In a written response to Senator Feinstein for further clarification on this issue, Gonzales stated "that under Article 16 there is no legal obligation under the Convention Against Torture on cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment with respect to aliens overseas." That analysis flies in the face of the treaty's ratification history and would remove serious human rights violations from legal prohibition.

The full text of the Bybee Memo is online at TomJoad.org.

Note that the author of the memo, former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, is facing war crimes charges along with Donald Rumsfeld in a case brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights in Germany.