Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Comforting delusions

If waterboarding is not torture then chocolate isn't fattening, smoking is not hazardous to ones health, cops never arrest the wrong person and that nice fellow offering to sell it to us has a genuine deed to the Brooklyn Bridge. We are talking about comforting delusions here folks. They happen because there are always some things that we would prefer to believe even when they are ridiculous. Well trained legal professionals offering legal advice should be above crude delusional errors of this kind. When they pretend not to be it is another comforting delusion that they would like us to believe in.

Not only should Yoo and Bybee have been held to account instead of perpetuating the expedient fiction that they commited only innocent errors but so should the CIA and other governmental lawyers to whom their torture memos were addressed. As legal professionals themselves they are responsible for exercising independent critical judgment. They have no excuse for not rejecting the memos as the frauds they clearly were.

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