If you don't like it, too bad.

On the contrary - I'm enough of a pragmatist to understand, and agree with, its necessity and proper usage.

As the courts have ruled, there are limits to Executive Privilege. For example, a president can't hide behind it to cover criminal activity, as in the Nixon case.

Precisely - neither can a president's advisors.

As you're probably aware, the inference immediately drawn from the knowledge of the "torture memos" (if I may be so crude as to label them such, for convenience) is:

Whether or not they went up the chain of command, lower-level circulation of those memos (or paraphrasis of their conclusions) may have fostered the atmosphere which resulted in the documented abuses at Abu Ghraib.

I would think it more beneficial to the upper-level players of the Bush Admin' that, if they can show those memos did not reach the president or his senior advisors, they should be forthcoming. Meanwhile, it is all too easy to interpret those memos as an attempt to weasel out of compliance, in practice, with international treaty while still professing abhorrence of torture in principal.

I heard a remark last evening (wish I could remember the source) condensing the conclusion of the memos in question as "torture is justified in self-defense."

What a bizarre concept for American minds to have formulated.