Bush's confession:
One such person who gave us information was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. … And I’m in the Oval Office and I am told that we have captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the professionals believe he has information necessary to secure the country. So I ask what tools are available for us to find information from him and they gave me a list of tools, and I said are these tools deemed to be legal? And so we got legal opinions before any decision was made.
Imagine what our legal system would look like if all a powerful person needed to get away with committing a crime was to find a lawyer somewhere who could argue what you did was legal. Oh, wait, that is what our legal system looks like.
Ali Frick points out that KSM provided no actionable intelligence, but Bush didn't name him because he thought he produced actionable intelligence. He named KSM because he wanted to offer someone who is so completely loathsome that people wouldn't be offended by the thought of him being tortured.
The brazenness of Bush's admission, having denied outright several times that the United States has anything to do with torture, is pretty staggering. But with Barack Obama having practically ruled out prosecutions for high level officials who authorized torture out of "forward-lookingness" it pretty much feels like they're all going to get away with it.
-- A. Serwer
