From the Washington Post:

Torture “is basically subject to perception,” CIA counterterrorism lawyer Jonathan Fredman told a group of military and intelligence officials gathered at the U.S.-run detention camp in Cuba on Oct. 2, 2002, according to minutes of the meeting. “If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.”

I have two reactions:
-FUCK THIS SHIT.
-Oh, big surprise.


If they could stop tarnishing my nation that would be cool, though. I think it's reassuring that they at least knew what they were doing and didn't care, rather than actually being so morally and basically stupid that they just fell into some big hole full of war crimes. I think I can handle deliberate evil over banal evil.

I have work to do now. (Speaking of the banality of evil, how fucked up is it that I can read that and then just think, "Welp, back to work"?)

EDIT: I take breaks from research by reading the news. It could be worse.

Anyway, from the NYT story on the same thing:
The military never used waterboarding, which simulates the experience of drowning, but the C.I.A. used it on three prisoners with the approval of the Justice Department.

Oh bullshit. Big, fat, turds from male cows. Cattlewaste. Kinecrap. ("Kine" as archaic term for cattle, not as a Greek root word having to do with motion; although the addition of that element affords some delightful possibilities.)

Just to be clear, these articles are about notes that have come out from a meeting of Pentagon lawyers who got together to figure out legal cover for torture. Months before anybody in the field requested being able to use such techniques. (The notes, however, demonstrate that they were being used in the field already; they just "officially" didn't exist.)