Charnel House: the Gonzo Papers

[Elidor]

October 4, 2007
Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations
By SCOTT SHANE, DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN.

This article is by Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/washington/04interrogate.html?_r=5&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=login&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1191471597-+wAdygbBYZiOKvDfNOennA

via TPM:

It seems, from an article in tomorrow's Times, that there's still much we are yet to learn about how far the Gonzales Justice Department took us into the darkness of state-sponsored torture and lawlessness. Not just the euphemism-laced quasi-torture we've already been numbed to. But everything. From Cheney's lips to Gonzales' pen, you might say. From the Times ...

'Shame' hardly does it justice. But it is a start. How does the country, the state, cleanse itself of the pollution of Cheneyism?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/054999.php

Digby chimes in:

I am still stunned that we are talking about the United States of America issuing dry legal opinions about how much torture you are allowed to inflict on prisoners. Stories like this one are the very definition of the banality of evil --- a bunch of ideologues and bureaucrats blithely committing morally reprehensible acts apparently without conscience or regret.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/sociopathic-governance-by-digby-ny.html