… ’cause we get to define what torture is
The media have largely ignored the magnitude of John Yoo’s just disclosed ‘torture memos’ but there is an excellent recap at Huffington Post
Yesterday, an 81-page memo, authored by John C. Yoo, who was a deputy in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice at the time of its creation, was declassified and made public. The memo, which, among other things, was used as the rationale for authorizing the torture of government detainees, has long been held to be a savage reimagining of the structure of the Executive Branch and its authority, hostile to the traditional checks and balances that circumscribe the President’s authority. And that’s stating the matter diplomatically.
