Ashcroft, Pentagon Memos Were Created to Justify Torture After the Fact – NYT

The New York Times finally reports something about US torture policy. Water torture, you name it, was already being done by CIA and others for some months before the August 2002 Justice Dept. memo by Bybee justifying it; they decided to do some CYA when they got nervous about the criminality of what they’d already done. HOWEVER the main thrust of this news article is to build a story for Ashcroft that says – get this – that the memos (and the torture they justified of Al Qaeda types) and Abu Ghraib had nothing to do with one another. Doublethink review here: 9-11 and Iraq – CONNECTED. Torture in Guantanamo/Afghanistan and torture at Abu Ghraib? TOTALLY UNRELATED. Oh and one more thing -Bybee wrote the memo and sent it to the US President without Ashcroft ever seeing it, he was “out of the loop.” Michael Moore’s reference to Orwell is only looking more wise….

Ironically, the Times is beginning to catch up on this document dump, even posting a brief “Guide to the Memos” here, days after the Washington Post one was up, but the summaries are better than those done by the Post. If you’re wondering what the hell the documents are about the guide above is a good place to start.