Replying to a message of Dan Ceppa to Earl Croasmun:

 DC> Waterboarding is illegal.  You are arguing by doing the W thing and 
 DC> trying to call it by a different name.  

 DC> Got news for you:  It's still illegal under any euphemism.  

It always was.  The legal fiction that it and most of the other 'enhanced
interrogation' techniques were just ducky came from Addington, Haynes,
Yoo and Bybee.  *They* wrote the memos that were used to get the
program off the ground (and take the perpetrators off the hook).  Obama
(and the Supreme Court before him) merely removed that legal fiction.

Note that the rendition program (kidnapping people and shipping them to
nations that do torture under contract) has been going on since at least
Reagan's administration.  Bush minor merely increased the scale of
operations - but not by much.  Arrest warrants have been issued for a
couple of dozen CIA agents involved in such a kidnapping in Italy; it's
extremely unlikely that those warrants (a) have the agents' correct names
on them and (b) would be honored in this country if the agents were
correctly identified - despite the treaty provisions that require them to be.

That last point, incidentally, is why no charges are likely to be pressed
against any Americans over the torture programs anywhere on the planet.
It might not be wise for any of those individuals to travel to countries that
do take such treaty obligations seriously, though.  Augusto Pinochet discovered
that when he travelled to Britain for medical treatment several years ago.
It can be truly amazing how fast a legal system can work when a potential
defendant mistakenly or accidentally gets within reach of a court.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+