So that those who did hold and keep the position drew the required legal boxes around their clients acts isn't surprising, and them saying what their client requires them to say doesn't make it so either.
I have read those memos, and as a lawyer who has written research papers like that, I understand the legal arguments very well. I think they are correct. Not only do I not believe any of the enhance interrogation techniques, including the waterboarding technique as detailed, violated any law against torture, I don't believe any of them even came very close to the line. I've heard John Yoo discuss this work, and one thing that made the analysis especially difficult was that because section 2340 was so recent, there had been no cases interpreting it to go by. They had to look to every other source they could find--history, custom, legislative intent, and so on--for guidance. That is a damn hard thing to do, and someone is guaranteed to second-guess your conclusions.
It is worth noting that U.S. negotiators did not agree to every term of the Convention Against Torture. The terms the Senate ratified and were then codified in section 2340 are not the entire CAT that some other nations may have signed on to, because the negotiators were instructed not to agree to restrictions it was felt might tie a President's hands too tightly in dealing with threats to national security.
The OLC is part of the Justice Dept., and its main "client" for this work was the Defense Dept. They asked about the interrogation techniques being proposed because they wanted to make sure they were legal before starting to use them. Neither they nor anyone else had any way to require the OLC researchers to say anything. At that time, Mr. Holder had not yet created the most politicized Justice Dept. in our history. If Mr. Yoo, Mr. Bybee, or others had concluded that one or more of the techniques was not legal, there was nothing to prevent them from stating that conclusion, and possibly recommending changes to bring it within the law.
The memos conclude that torture is only severe pain etc. which the analysis indicates is roughly something that leaves a permanent mark, and so waterboarding and all the rest doesn't meet the threshold. For the mental pain, we have to INTEND to inflict mental problems and so if it happens, and we don't intend that results, all's good.
That's a reasonably accurate description of the gist of the memos, although they are far more complex than that. What of it? That's pretty much my own reading of section 2340A.
And there was really no meaningful analysis of the effect of the program as a whole except mostly baseless or at best speculative conclusions.
Do you have any evidence that the lawyers involved were asked to make any such analysis? My understanding is that that was not within their brief.
And so, the treatments in part or as a program might/likely be 'cruel, inhuman and degrading' but definitely NOT "torture."
It's basic to criminal law that
every element of a crime must be proven to establish guilt. There are very few crimes for which intent does not need to be proven, and torture is certainly not one of them.
Basically, the memos read like "A Guide in How to Achieve the Same Effect as "Torture" Within U.N./U.S. Statutory Guidelines."
That's exactly what I would expect. Obviously the interrogators wanted to use as much coercion as possible without violating any laws regarding torture. The whole purpose of the enhanced interrogation techniques was to get results from Al Qaeda and Taliban jihadists who knew the regular U.S. interrogation techniques and had been trained to resist them.
And now I'm waiting to hear why FDR broke the law by executing a U.S. citizen without a jury trial, by relocating people of Japanese descent away from the West Coast, by sending a ship carrying 100 tons of mustard gas to Italy, where it got blown up and killed our servicemen, and so on. Imagine the greatest American liberal ever being a war criminal!