On Torture

The torture memos and all their attendant editorial make for heady if sickening reading. There's a lot out there, and there's more to come. I think it's all our jobs to read this stuff and understand what our government was doing in our names so that we never let it happen again.

One particularly low point cited at the Opinionator shows just how twisted and blinded the Bush administration became in believing that when you say something often enough, it's true.

[The torture memos] really need to be required reading for everyone. I think the line that probably sums them up best is on page 11 of the Bybee memo, where he casually observes that “[t]he waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering.”

With that wonderful bit of “analysis,” our government lawyers concluded that the most iconic example of torture in human history — a technique that dates back to the Spanish Inquisition, if not earlier — was not in fact torture. That’s like writing a memo concluding that forced sexual intercourse doesn’t constitute rape so long as you make it quick.