Wednesday, April 22, 2009

about that torture stuff...

philip zelikow on the olc torture memos- h/t dusterella

"The underlying absurdity of the administration’s position can be summarized this way. Once you get to a substantive compliance analysis for “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” you get the position that the substantive standard is the same as it is in analogous U.S. constitutional law. So the OLC must argue, in effect, that the methods and the conditions of confinement in the CIA program could constitutionally be inflicted on American citizens in a county jail.

In other words, Americans in any town of this country could constitutionally be hung from the ceiling naked, sleep deprived, water-boarded, and all the rest — if the alleged national security justification was compelling. I did not believe our federal courts could reasonably be expected to agree with such a reading of the Constitution."

shock and awe

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Zelikow's articles at Foreign Policy really give us insight as to how desperate the Bushies were. That they tried to destroy every copy of his dissenting opinion on Bybee and Bradbury's fuckery says volumes about them.