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Returning to your specific question about Bush/Cheney: The law re: torture should provide an exception for emergencies of the kind I identified (and you have not addressed).
I've addressed it and it's extremely easy to address. The law should make torture illegal, period.
Since you disagree: do you think we should withdraw from the Geneva Convention? As you might know, that doesn't provide exceptions to torture, and we are a signatory to it, which means -- pursuant to the Constitution -- that its absolute prohibitions on torture are binding law in this country.
Since you favor having our leaders be able to violate the Geneva Conventions, are you in favor of having the U.S. abrogate that treaty?
Even the criminal law recognizes "necessity" of this kind -- self-defense, defense of others. I assume this is what the senators are alluding to and, if so, I agree with them.
You're confused about how the criminal law works. "Necessity" is a very narrow defense in general. We don't write necessity exceptions into our criminal laws.
We don't say that it's a crime to shoot someone in the leg unless doing so is necessary to extract life-saving information
from them.
What you're advocating is a complete violation of Western justice since the Nuremberg trials. People who believed what you believe were tried and convicted as war criminals. You can dress it up all you want, but anyone who advocates that the law explicitly legalize torture -- as you do -- is advocating about the most morally repugnant act one can think of.
