Torture = Treason

Obama releases the torture memos, redacting the names of CIA persons appearing in them. Kevin Drum on the depths of the moral depravity:

Reading the OLC torture memos is enough to make you ill. The techniques in question are plainly and instinctively abhorrent by any common sense definition, and the authors of the memos obviously know it. But somehow they have to conclude otherwise, so they write page after mind-numbing page of sterile legal language designed to justify authorizing it anyway. It's not torture if the victim survives it intact. It's not against the law if it takes place outside the United States. Waterboarding is OK as long as it isn't performed more than twice in a 24-hour period. Sleep deprivation of shackled prisoners for seven days at a time is permissible as long as the victim's diaper is changed frequently. And on and on and on.

Do they know this is torture? Of course they do.

Jeffrey Toobin on a particular player who needs to be made accountable:

The author of the memo, which is dated August 1, 2002, is Jay S. Bybee, who was the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. Bybee concludes that all of these various techniques, including waterboarding, do not constitute torture under American or international law.

Bybee is generally the forgotten man in torture studies of the Bush era. The best known of the legal architects of the torture regime is John Yoo, who was a deputy to Bybee. For better or worse, Yoo has been a vocal defender of the various torture policies, and he remains outspoken on these issues. But whatever happened to his bossë/p>

Today, Bybee is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Of course he is. Membership has its benefits.

Is Obama daring us to call for investigations and indictments? The Administration announced policy not to indict CIA officials who participated in the torture program, leaving the door open for the higher ups to taste the courthouse air.

Dick, anyone?