Friday, Jul 16, 2010 09:17 ET
By Glenn Greenwald
The New York Times has an article today on Jay Bybee, the torture-authorizing Bush OLC lawyer and current judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The focus of the article is Bybee's recent Congressional testimony that several of the torture tactics used by the CIA were never approved by the Justice Department -- which means they should fall outside the scope of the Obama DOJ's immunity shield from prosecution -- but it was the last passage that I think is most noteworthy (h/t reader rg):
said he was "proud of our opinions" at the Office of Legal Counsel, too, calling them "well researched” and "very carefully written."
Still, he said the controversy surrounding his tenure there had been difficult.
"I have regrets because of the notoriety that this has brought me," he said. "It has imposed enormous pressures on me both professionally and personally. It has had an impact on my family. And I regret that, as a result of my government service, that that kind of attention has been visited on me and on my family."
Just think about that. The so-called "government service" Jay Bybee did caused countless detainees to be subjected to systematized, medieval torture techniques designed to permanently break their mind and spirit. Innocent men spent years wasting away in a cage, with no due process of any kind, subjected to horrific and life-destroying abuse because of what Bybee authorized. So frivolous were Bybee's opinions that they were scorned even by subsequent right-wing, Bush appointees such as Jack Goldsmith, and the DOJ's own Office of Professional Responsibility formally renounced and harshly criticized those memos. For that work, he was rewarded with a life tenured, permanently-well-paying job as a federal appellate judge.
remainder: http:http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
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