"Torture" memos

The LAT reports this morning on the "torture" memos and their authors, saying the authors, specifically John Yoo and Jay Bybee, possibly should be disbarred. The arguments used in the memos were so poorly reasoned, the LAT suggests, that the authors could not have made a serious effort to describe the applicable law and express well reasoned opinions. Instead, the LAT suggests, the authors seem to have cooked up opinions that would support the practices being followed by CIA, which amounted to torture.

Sadly, the LAT's report is based on interviews with anonymous sources who acknowledge that they weren't authorized to divulge the information to the LAT because it is classified. Accordingly, the LAT's report was based on information obtained from people who broke the law by supplying it.

The LAT report includes a paragraph claiming that "the U.S. government for decades had prosecuted and convicted people for using waterboarding" yet that fact "was given little mention" in the "torture" memos. The LAT cites no such case and fails to define "little mention" or to explain why that was insufficient.