As the National Religious Campaign Against Torture - made up of member institutions representing followers of the Bahai faith, Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism and more - attests, it runs contrary to the teachings of all religions and dishonors all faiths. As I struggled to live, I thought about my wife who was pregnant with a child I might never see. I could see the surface five or six feet above me, but the water pushed me down harder than my legs could push me up. As the current pulled us past a large rock that jutted out into the river, it curled down and took me with it. As the raft careened through the rapids, two of us were tossed out.

The closest I’ve come to death was more than 20 years ago, while I was white-water rafting in West Virginia with some Air Force friends. I know something about the feeling of drowning. The subject may experience the fear or panic associated with the feeling of drowning.” Jay Bybee wrote: “When the waterboard is used, the subject’s body responds as if the subject were drowning…. 1, 2002, in a memo addressed to the general counsel of the CIA, Assistant Atty.

Ultimately, the OLC provided legal cover for the use of most of these techniques. As the administration developed its interrogation policies, it concealed various forms of torture under the moniker “enhanced interrogation techniques.” It consulted with the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice on the legality of these techniques, including waterboarding, walling (slamming detainees against walls), forcing detainees into stress positions and subjecting them to sleep deprivation. The idea that an attorney's job is, in all circumstances, to help his client get as much as he can without clearly violating the law is simplistic and wrong.The Bush administration “torture memos” will be 10 years old this week.

Yoo essentially exploited the prestige of his office to expand the law and expand executive authority in a way that would not have been permitted had it not been sub rosa. The tortue memo was, most importantly, a memo. The way it was described to me (by a former OLC member and law prof, before this torture business blew up), is that the OLC can basically write 'get out jail free' cards for administration officials, so they're expected to be very careful and conservative in their interpretation of executive authority. These guys are smart and know what they're talking about.

The OLC's opinions aren't taken lightly by federal courts, mainly because it's the most pretigious office a carreer public servant attorney could ask for. Counsel's advice, if misguided, can exonerate the employer, or the employer's agents. The analogy even goes to the weight courts grant in-house (or even retained, in some circumstances) counsel. Counsel's main job is to help his employer comply with the law, not avoid it. I'm uncomfortable labeling Yoo a war criminal, but the OLC's relationship to the White House (and by extension, to other agencies) is more like the relationship in-house general counsel has to his employer than a normal attorney-client relationship in litigation.

Torture memoranda