The Torture Memos:Rationalizing The Unthinkable

The New Press has just published six of the memos by the Bush Department of Justice released from 2002 to 2005 to legally justify the practice of torture on detainees during the "war on terror". Phillipe Sands, author of Torture Team, the first book I remember about the memos,writes the introduction where he outlines the international developments that triggered the release of the memos. His own book was a sensitive and objective view of America caught unawares by the attacks on 9/11 and probed the views of those principals involved in these dreadful deliberations. The lower level officials he found to be honest and fairly open about the problems with their own actions; while the higher ups remained fairly reticient to even acknowledge the horrible truth.

The book--291pages--was edited by David Cole, a professor of law at Georgetown and the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, Cole's 40-page introduction puts these memos in their context both within the policy deliberations of the Bush Administration and within the requirements of law, particularly international obligations of the United States. The memos themselves are horrifying in their dryness and matter-of-factness. Naturally, the lawyers enlarged any ambiguities to justify the worst abuses under this policy. To read these legal justifications produced by men educated at some of America's leading law schools is absolutely horrifying.