President George W. Bush attempted today to explain a newly released White House memo outlining a controversial plan to outsource prison abuse to India.

According to the memo, the White House has been actively exploring the possibility of establishing a telephone calling center in Bangalore that would harass Iraqi detainees at all hours of the night with highly annoying telemarketing inquiries.

The memo details a scenario in which telemarketers from India would instruct Iraqi prisoners to remove their clothing and then would badger them with complicated offers involving their long-distance phone service.

The Bangalore callers would also subject Iraqi prisoners to lengthy consumer research surveys about their breakfast cereal and television viewing preferences, the memo said.

With Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at his side, President Bush defended the unorthodox interrogation procedures, arguing, "We know that telemarketing is a tool of last resort, but we are at war."

Charles Claybourn, a spokesman for the human rights group Amnesty International, attacked the White House proposals: "This wrongheaded plan involves not only calling prisoners, but also placing them on hold for forty-five minutes or longer with Celine Dion music, in clear violation of the Geneva Convention."

On the campaign trail in Ohio, presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry blasted the proposal to send American torture jobs overseas, telling his audience, "With our fragile economy, we can ill afford losing even one prison abuse job to India."

Mr. Kerry said there were "more effective ways" to get prisoners to talk, such as repeatedly playing them his stump speech about healthcare.

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If anyone is concerned .. this is picked from Economic Times :)

 



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