In case you missed this in the morning NY Times (more amplified in the
current new issue of the New Yorker), this revelation of permission to
torture (Abu Graib), violated International Law,  et al  puts the finger
right on Rumsfeld and Bush (and not on the advice of their senior,
professional Government lawyers).
Makes it all very nice to have Roberts and Alito as Bush appointments to the
White House. Boy, are those guys going to come in handy, if these crimes of
torture get into the domestic court system. But this stuff may will go
straight to the Hague and we will be able to witness (lots of luck) Rumsfeld
do a poetic courtroom parody of Milosevic ("Goodness gracious, we would
never do a thing like that. With all due respect, prosecutors, you have it
flat wrong. These were the bad guys and these - what you call torture - were
skills as we all learned when I was a college wrestler." etc.
Take heed, take heed!


Senior Lawyer at Pentagon Broke Ranks on Detainees

By TIM GOLDEN
Published: February 20, 2006

One of the Pentagon's top civilian lawyers repeatedly challenged the Bush
administration's policy on the coercive interrogation of terror suspects,
arguing that such practices violated the law, verged on torture and could
ultimately expose senior officials to prosecution, a newly disclosed
document shows.

The lawyer, Alberto J. Mora, a political appointee who retired Dec. 31 after
more than four years as general counsel of the Navy, was one of many
dissenters inside the Pentagon. Senior uniformed lawyers in all the military
services also objected sharply to the interrogation policy, according to
internal documents declassified last year.

But Mr. Mora's campaign against what he viewed as an official policy of
cruel treatment, detailed in a memorandum he wrote in July 2004 and
recounted in an article in the Feb. 27 issue of The New Yorker magazine,
made public yesterday, underscored again how contrary views were often
brushed aside in administration debates on the subject.

"Even if one wanted to authorize the U.S. military to conduct coercive
interrogations, as was the case in Guantánamo, how could one do so without
profoundly altering its core values and character?" Mr. Mora asked the
Pentagon's chief lawyer, William J. Haynes II, according to the memorandum.

A Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Tracy O'Grady-Walsh, declined to comment
late yesterday on specific assertions in Mr. Mora's memorandum. "Detainee
operations and interrogation policies have been scrutinized under a
microscope, from all different angles," she said. "It was found that it was
not a Department of Defense policy to encourage or condone torture."

In interviews, current and former Defense Department officials said that
part of what was striking about Mr. Mora's forceful role in the internal
debates was how out of character it seemed: a loyal Republican, he was known
as a supporter of President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and
the fight against terrorism.

"He's an extremely well-spoken, almost elegant guy," the former director of
the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, David L. Brandt, who first came to
Mr. Mora with concerns about the interrogation methods, said in an interview
last week. "He's not a door-kicker."

Mr. Mora is also known for generally avoiding public attention. Reached by
telephone yesterday, he declined to comment further on his memorandum.

Mr. Mora prepared the 22-page memorandum for a Defense Department review of
interrogation operations that was conducted by Vice Adm. Albert T. Church
III, after the scandal involving treatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib
prison in Iraq.

The document focused on Mr. Mora's successful opposition to the coercive
techniques that Mr. Rumsfeld approved for interrogators at Guantánamo Bay on
Dec. 2, 2002, and Mr. Mora's subsequent, failed effort to influence the
legal discussions that led to new methods approved by Mr. Rumsfeld the
following April.

Mr. Mora took up the issue after Mr. Brandt came to him on Dec. 17, 2002, to
relay the concerns of Navy criminal agents at Guantánamo that some detainees
there were being subjected to "physical abuse and degrading treatment" by
interrogators.

Acting with the support of Gordon R. England, who was then secretary of the
Navy and is now Mr. Rumsfeld's deputy, Mr. Mora took his concerns to Mr.
Haynes, the Defense Department's general counsel.

"In my view, some of the authorized interrogation techniques could rise to
the level of torture, although the intent surely had not been to do so," Mr.
Mora wrote. 

After trying to rally other senior officials to his position, Mr. Mora met
again with Mr. Haynes on Jan. 10, 2003. He argued his case even more
forcefully, raising the possibility that senior officials could be
prosecuted for authorizing abusive conduct, and asking: "Had we jettisoned
our human rights policies?"

Still, Mr. Mora wrote, it was only when he warned Mr. Haynes on Jan. 15 that
he was planning to issue a formal memorandum on his opposition to the
methods ‹ delivering a draft to Mr. Haynes's office ‹ that Mr. Rumsfeld
suddenly retracted the techniques.

In a break from standard practice, former Pentagon lawyers said, the final
draft of the report on interrogation techniques was not circulated to most
of the lawyers, including Mr. Mora, who had contributed to it. Several of
them said they learned that a final version had been issued only after the
Abu Ghraib scandal broke.