"The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act," said Brian A. Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, in the letter, which had not previously been made public....

Mr. Benczkowski should never travel outside the borders of the United States again. If he does, he will surely be apprehended and tried for War Crimes.

I am disgusted with what the current administration has done. The ends do NOT justify the means. We are still (just barely) a Nation of laws, not men.

May we PLEASE begin the Impeachment proceedings now?

ITMFA

Don't expect anything more than the Party line from "Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General" Brian A. Benczkowski. He's, of course, an insider. Prior to coming back to DOJ to make those outrageous comments in the letter., he was at the ATF as politically appointed Chief of Staff following the departure of ethically questionable Director Brian Staffer:

(Oct 2006) Acting Director Michael J. Sullivan of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) announced last Friday the appointment of Brian A. Benczkowski, a lawyer who has served on Capitol Hill and with the Justice Department, as chief of staff.

Benczkowski most recently served as majority counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, where he handled violent crime, cyber-security, civil justice, Justice Department reauthorization, and other issues for Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wisconsin).

Prior to his service on the House Judiciary Committee, Benczkowski served as staff director and senior counsel in the Office of the Legal Policy at the Justice Department from 2002-2004. From 1997-2000, he worked as counsel to U.S. Senator Pete V. Domenici (R-New Mexico). Benczkowski also has practiced law in Washington, specializing in homeland and national security, corporate compliance, and appellate litigation.

A native of Woodbridge, Virginia, Benczkowski received his B.A. in 1991 from the University of Virginia and his law degree in 1994 from the Washington School of Law in St. Louis.

As a bonus, I guess Senator Domenici has nothing to fear from DOJ, huh?

I beg to differ, Savannah. Grandaddy Mukasey is not bending over and grabbing his ankles. He is "kneeling" before the altar of Bush. Everything he's doing is strictly voluntary!

Here is a haunting analogy. All governments seek to make legitimate their policies, even rogue or unlawful governments. An analogy is Ernst Janning who was Germany's highly respected legal scholar and judiciary who came to admit that they all bent to the political will and "fever" in the nation to legitimize the Holocaust.

This is nothing other than situational rationalism easily defined as the desired end justifies the means.

Ultimately the cost to the United States, our people and those who we allowed to govern us will have to pay a huge price for this deviation of basic morals and ethics.

To Dick, this will not be a "so what".

O/T but I think worth noting. There was debate and discussion that popped up when it was disclosed that DOJ Office of Legal Couinsel's John Yoo penned the torture memos personally and somehow got them over the to White House without sending them up the DOJ chain of command. Yoo has of course clammed up - unwilling to respond to a subpoena from the Judiciary Committee because it would harm attorney-client privilege. Commenters then went to wonder if Yoo had "a client" at all. If he didn't then the privilege is not applicable.

Anyway, evidence that OVP and Dick Cheney were not Yoo's clients. Why? Because OLC does not advise the Vice President:

Office of Legal Counsel The Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel assists the Attorney General in his function as legal advisor to the President and all the executive branch agencies. The Office drafts legal opinions of the Attorney General and also provides its own written opinions and oral advice in response to requests from the Counsel to the President, the various agencies of the executive branch, and offices within the Department.

http://www.justice.gov/olc/

Yet we know by the "fourth branch theory" of Dick Cheney that OVP is "not an Agency" of the Executive Branch. And we know that Dick Cheney is not represented by the Counsel to the President.

So OVP is not using DOJ for its legal opinions.

I'm sure all of the countries we used to criticize for human rights violations will waste no time in telling us that they were undertaking them to prevent a threatened terrorist attack. The saddest thing is, they'll have as much evidence as the Bush Administration does in most cases.

....except that extreme methods produce unreliable data!

Allowing practices, like waterboarding, namely allowing torture to continue is counter-intuitive, and could in fact, hurt us.

Terrorists, being tortured, will tell us whatever we want to hear....

Doesn't exactly make for a rock solid case that it will help prevent an attack. We'll just be following bum leads.

To say nothing of the fact we are United States of America and this goes against everything we stand for.

Torture is unforgiveable, how will we confront that fact. Will we be able to forgive ourselves once we take a good look at what we are doing? Will the world? Will they forgive the unforgiveable.

It disgusts me so, to see that we are doing this.

Something to ponder: why would we assume that the next president will voluntarily give up these wonderful new powers he has? Why won't he, instead, seek to expand those powers? And, most sickening of all, why won't the Congress, with the universal backing of the corporate MSM, impeach the next Democratic President just to prove they still have cojones?

Any pendulum will eventually swing the other way. This particular pendulum will make that change of direction just in time for a new Democratic President to "benefit" from the change.

"The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act,"

In one letter written Sept. 27, 2007, Mr. Benczkowski argued that "to rise to the level of an outrage" and thus be prohibited under the Geneva Conventions, conduct "must be so deplorable that the reasonable observer would recognize it as something that should be universally condemned."

Letting the logic of these two position play out is quite troubling. First, we have just given a "legitimate" justification for any rogue government to claim that torture is a justified action against its enemies, even when the US attacks it. For example, imagine if the Iraq war (03 version) had gone on longer and some soldiers (or to make the scenario better, some CIA black ops types) had been captured (suppose the CIA folks were capture before war broke out) by Saddam Hussein. He tortures them to find out what "terrorists" acts are planned against his country. What would the US reaction be?

Even more troubling, given the rather broad definition of "terrorist" groups that have been under surveillance by the Bush administration...like all those peace groups such as the Quakers, I would never trust this administration's sense of what constitutes planning for a legitimate attack against the US. Moreover, the "reasonable person" standard is just unconscionable in the hands of these folks.

This may sound a bit excessively reactionary (and not as coherent as I would like), but I do not trust this administration's "conscience" whatsoever. (New definition of an oxymoron: Bush Administration's conscience) This rationale is just so much bovine fecal matter. Put it in the mouth of Saddam Hussein, Kim Il-Jong, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and see how the Bush folks respond. THAT would demonstrate the utter hypocrisy of their reasoning.

If you have to ask whether something is torture, shouldn't that be an indication that it probably is?

To JDinDC: but it is anti-abortion Moral Relativism. That makes it ok.