The law also denied the detainees access to habeas corpus and barred the torture of prisoners. The provision of the law allowed the president to determine what constitutes "torture".[295]
On March 8, 2008, Bush vetoed H.R. 2082,[297] a bill that would have expanded congressional oversight over the intelligence community and banned the use of waterboarding as well as other forms of interrogation not permitted under the United States Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations, saying that "the bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the War on Terror".[298] In April 2009, the ACLU sued and won release of the secret memos that had authorized the Bush administration's interrogation tactics.[299] One memo detailed specific interrogation tactics including a footnote that described waterboarding as torture as well as that the form of waterboarding used by the CIA was far more intense than authorized by the Justice Department.[300]

North Korea condemnation
Main article: North Korea–United States relations
Bush publicly condemned Kim Jong-il of North Korea and identified North Korea as one of three states in an "axis of evil". 