"The legal opinions have grave weaknesses"

So, belatedly, a memo is now in the public domain. In truth I can't understand why this makes much of a difference. Okay, yes, perhaps this is a smoking gun signifying the Bush administration was told point-blank that its policy amounted to war crimes:

"We are unaware of any precedent in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or any subsequent conflict for authorized, systemic interrogation practices similar to those in question here."

And, yes, the Bush White House did everything possible to destroy all copies of this particular memo, figuring it might be difficult to explain to a media, even one as craven and compromised as ours turned out to be.

But, on the substance, there is nothing new here that we didn't already know. As early as April 2009, Philip Zelikow wrote, despairing, about this systematic and brazen violation of some of America's most core principles:

". . . [T]he issue is not about who or what [the detainees] are. It is about who or what we are."

Mr. Zelikow chaired the 9/11 Commission, which suggests he is someone who is relatively unimpeachable even by today's woeful standard of political discourse.

In 2010, the Obama White House decided officially to turn a blind eye. The legal memos justifying state-sanctioned torture - the ones that were released - were on their face patently ridiculous, so much so that the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility recommended disciplinary action against the responsible lawyers. Obama's Assistant Attorney General overruled the OPR in a stunning display of political cynicism. John Yoo (Bush's Assist. Attorney General who was most directly responsible for justifying torture, and who seemed to revel in his role) continued to double down, insisting that the U.S. president is not bound by archaic constraints like laws when there are wars to fight, including those without end, like our current Global War on Unspecified Threats. And, sure enough, the incompetent newbie lawyers brought into the Justice Department to write the travesties masquerading as legal opinions that enabled these state-sanctioned crimes, lawyers who were barely-trained but nevertheless unleashed on an unsuspecting world courtesy of the Federalist Society and third-rate law schools, have gone on to comfy sinecures elsewhere.

It was at about this time that I lost faith in Obama.