torture memo revealed

News of the memo's existence is of course old. But the contents have now also been released. From WaPo: "Memo: Laws Didn't Apply to Interrogators".

The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes.

I'm amazed it was declassified at all. Go ACLU!!

Hat tip: Sullivan / Greenwald, the latter of whom observes:

It is not, of course, news that the Bush administration adopted (and still embraces) legal theories which vest the President with literally unlimited power, including the power to break our laws. There are, though, several points worth noting as a result of the disclosure of this Memorandum:

(1) The fact that John Yoo is a Professor of Law at Berkeley and is treated as a respectable, serious expert by our media institutions, reflects the complete destruction over the last eight years of whatever moral authority the United States possessed. Comporting with long-held stereotypes of two-bit tyrannies, we're now a country that literally exempts our highest political officials from the rule of law, and have decided that there should be no consequences when they commit serious felonies.

John Yoo's Memorandum, as intended, directly led to -- caused -- a whole series of war crimes at both Guantanamo and in Iraq. The reason such a relatively low-level DOJ official was able to issue such influential and extraordinary opinions was because he was working directly with, and at the behest of, the two most important legal officials in the administration: George Bush's White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, and Dick Cheney's counsel (and current Chief of Staff) David Addington. Together, they deliberately created and authorized a regime of torture and other brutal interrogation methods that are, by all measures, very serious war crimes.

He also notes that 2) the legal structure set by the memo remains in place, 3) the idea that political appointees at the DoJ can absolve executive branch employees of following the law is "rancid and corrupt"; 4) since Nuermberg, we recognize that not only the trigger men are responsible, but the bureaucrats and lawyers as well.

His sad ending:

But those who propound these principles and claim to believe in them ought to apply them consistently. John Yoo is not some misguided conservative legal thinker with whom one should have civil, pleasant, intellectually stimulating debates at law schools and on PBS. Respectfully debating the legality and justification of torture regimes, and treating systematic torture perpetrators like John Yoo with respect, isn't all that far off from what Yoo and his comrades did. It isn't pleasant to think about high government officials in one's own country as war criminals -- that's something that only bad, evil dictatorships have -- but, pleasant or not, it rather indisputably happens to be what we have.

Cry.

UPDATE: Sadly, No! quotes a part worth noting separately:

Interrogators who harmed a prisoner would be protected by a “national and international version of the right to self-defense,” Yoo wrote. He also articulated a definition of illegal conduct in interrogations — that it must “shock the conscience” — that the Bush administration advocated for years.

“Whether conduct is conscience-shocking turns in part on whether it is without any justification,” Yoo wrote, explaining, for example, that it would have to be inspired by malice or sadism before it could be prosecuted.

Breathtaking cluelessness of how laws and societies work. Not to mention that it contains an admission that these people have no consciences. Yet it's the individual soldiers at the tail end of this who are the sole problem.

Gavin adds: [...] That definition of torture also allows for the prosecution of ‘bad apples,’* as with the Abu Ghraib affair. Naturally, their superiors would be unmaliciously managing paperwork and personnel matters as the blood and excrement spattered the cell walls.

And gives a helpful link to the Judges' Trial at Nuremberg.