The U.S. has laws against torture. What was done is clearly torture. The U.S. has, as a matter of policy, labeled those techniques as torture when describing other countries that engage in them (like Indonesia).
Whether you’re pro-torture or anti-torture, we’re a nation of laws. The fact is, GW was too much of a coward to admit what he and Cheney authorized was torture and was illegal. If he wanted to engage in these things he should have asked Congress to change to the laws and we could have had the national debate over it.
OR, in the bullshit fictional Jack Bauer world of “ticking time bomb” (no such scenario is presented in the memos, btw) Bush could have argued that he needed to order the torture in e moment of haste to “save millions” of lives. Then he could have let the Congress decide whether or not to impeach him for his lawbreaking. But he never did that. He came out and stated, matter-of-factly, “The Unites States doesn’t torture.” He broke the law, and then lied about it.
If you think the U.S. should use torture, then argue for it to be legalized. Create the “Torture Manual” for the DoD and run with it. But if you think it’s okay for a President to just go breaking the law because “he” happens to think it’s ok at the time, then you really are someone who believes in tyranny – that the government can do whatever they want, whenever they want, just because a handful of elites authorize it and they never have to suffer the consequences.
