I said "It remains to be seen" - I meant exactly that.

In the absence of fact - the text of the memo(s), and the circumstances under which they were written - it is no more a "stretch" to consider the potential criminality of authorizing the memos than it is a "stretch" to ignore the letter of Article 2 (2) of the treaty we've both linked to, which says there is no justification for torture. Period. End of legal opinion.

A bunch of DoJ flunkies with law degrees couldn't find what a layman with Google found? That's a stretch.

Is it a crime to secretly conspire to circumvent or violate a treaty to which the US is a signatory-without-reservation? I don't know, but it seems it ought to be. Who asked for the study? Why did they ask for it? Who read the conclusion? What, if anything, was done about it?

It may be worth saving the reputation of the Bush Admin, plagued as it is with lack of proper intelligence of any kind, to preempt conclusions of the sort my previous post implied by bringing forth the facts relating to the "torture memos".

The matter is at least as worthy of investigation as were the issues Kenneth Starr spent months and millions of our tax dollars on, a mere six years ago.