Legal Commentary

Saturday Morning Open Thread

By Big Tent Democrat

The Tour de France reaches its decisive stage this morning with the Maillot Jeune likely to be decided in today's time trial. Spaniard Carlos Sastre holds a 1:34 lead over the superior time trialer Australian Cadel Evans. By the numbers, Evans should make up the time and win the Tour. But there are no guarantees.

In other news, the Yoo-Bybee II torture memo has been released, sort of (most of it has been redacted), but one chilling bit of "legal analysis" is disclosed:

"To validate the statute, an individual must have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering," it reads at one point. "Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture."

More . .

Only torture with sadistic intent is actionable according to the Bush Administration, speaking through Yoo and Bybee. If your primary intent is to extract information, with the sadism just an added bonus, the torture is legal according to BushCo. This is not an Onion parody. That is what the memo says.

Spencer Ackermann interviewed the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer who said:

"It's very easy to make a case for a serious criminal investigation," Jaffer said. "There is copious evidence at this point that senior officials authorized torture, and as a result of the authority given to them by senior officials, CIA interrogators tortured prisoners in their custody. It's a disgrace there hasn't been a serious investigation of why CIA adopted interrogation methods that amount to torture and what happened as a result."

Do you think Obama legal advisor Cass Sunstein thinks this constitutes "egregious crimes?" Me neither.

Speaking for me only.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 26, 2008 (boomark / email).