The WaPost is reporting that the CIA asked for and got legal guidance from the justice department: Can we torture members of Al Qaeda? The Justice department replied: "necessity and self-defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability".
Oh, but nobody reads all those memos, you say? Not so. The memo's legal reasoning was used by a March 2003 Pentagon assessment of interrogation rules at Guantanamo -- an assessment written in response to a a request from Rumsfeld about Gitmo interrogation techniques.
It becomes difficult to claim that it was "just a few bad apples" when Defense was setting up a policy that will permit the US to use torture.
Read the article -- the memo contains legal advice on how to demonstrate you didn't use torture. Like, survey the professional literature on how to avoid significant, long-term psychological harm while inflicting pain and fear.
On the bright side: Dept. of Defense Lawyers protested -- no way, they said.
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