To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush's Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity.
We slammed prisoners against a wall. We put collars on them so they could not sleep. We locked them in boxes with insects.
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Their language is the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history. They detail how to fashion a collar for slamming a prisoner against a wall, exactly how many days he can be kept without sleep (11), and what, specifically, he should be told before being locked in a box with an insect - all to stop just short of having a jury decide that these acts violate the laws against torture and abusive treatment of prisoners.
We fabricated a contraption that would pitch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing during waterboarding.
In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.
We wrote legal memos to give immunity to those who committed reprehensible, un-American and illegal acts.
These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors' statutory obligation. They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country's most basic values.
Those who let it happen.
It sounds like the plot of a mob film, except the lawyers asking how much their clients can get away with are from the C.I.A. and the lawyers coaching them on how to commit the abuses are from the Justice Department. And it all played out with the blessing of the defense secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence director and, most likely, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
The abuses and the dangers do not end with the torture memos. Americans still know far too little about President Bush's decision to illegally eavesdrop on Americans - a program that has since been given legal cover by the Congress.
Presidents can do what they want?
Last week, The Times reported that the nation's intelligence agencies have been collecting private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans on a scale that went beyond the broad limits established in legislation last year. The article quoted the Justice Department as saying there had been problems in the surveillance program that had been resolved. But Justice did not say what those problems were or what the resolution was.
That is the heart of the matter: nobody really knows what any of the rules were. Mr. Bush never offered the slightest explanation of what he found lacking in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when he decided to ignore the law after 9/11 and ordered the warrantless wiretapping of Americans' overseas calls and e-mail. He said he was president and could do what he wanted.
We are a nation of laws.
We do not think Mr. Obama will violate Americans' rights as Mr. Bush did. But if Americans do not know the rules, they cannot judge whether this government or any one that follows is abiding by the rules.
If folks should have the stomach to read all of the released memos, all can be found here. I am not ready to go there myself.
To sign a petition telling Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate torture, go here.
Cheney must be suffering from delusional paranoia and guilt. He is obviously under the impression that Karl Rove and Tom Delay were successful in pulling off a permanent Republican majority and Cheney is the perpetual U.S. Dictator-in-Chief.
Go back into your undisclosed hole in hell, Dick. Stay where you belong.
