Bush bashing

In today's LAT, Bob Woodward reports on a Guantanamo official who, he says, determined that a detainee was tortured. It wasn't the techniques used that offended the official, Woodward reports, but the frequency and excessive application of techniques that amounted to torture. (Woodward reports that the detainee sometimes had to stand naked before a female interrogator, which raises the question who was being tortured, the detainee or the interrogator.)

Woodward's reporting is straightforward and accurate, presumably, until the end, when he closes with a quote from the official, as follows: "We learned as children it's easier to ask forgiveness than it is for permission. I think the buck stops at the Oval Office."

That suggests the official believes that the president should have been at Guantanamo overseeing interrogators to insure they didn't act excessively. The official probably thinks he should have been at Abu Ghraib too.