Ethics

Defending the Torture Memos

By Ed Brayton

If you thought the torture memos were bad, wait till you see David Rivkin's attempt to defend them at the Room for Debate blog at the New York Times. Doug Kmiec refers to the "tortuous reasoning" in the memos. David Cole nails the Bush administration for using "twisted and macabre legal reasoning to authorize the unspeakable." But Rivkin, who served in the White House under the first President Bush, offers an entirely unconvincing defense of the memos. In fact, he seems to be the only person this side of John Yoo who actually thinks those memos were well reasoned:

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on April 26, 2009 (boomark / email).