Zellikow was Condi Rice’s deputy and also 9/11 counsel. He claims that he wrote a memo objecting to the OLC torture memos when they were circulated in the Bush government. Zellikow claims to have identified a logical inconsistency in the Yoo/Bybee argument – but there is no inconsistency.
The underlying absurdity of the administration’s position can be summarized this way. Once you get to a substantive compliance analysis for “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” you get the position that the substantive standard is the same as it is in analogous U.S. constitutional law. So the OLC must argue, in effect, that the methods and the conditions of confinement in the CIA program could constitutionally be inflicted on American citizens in a county jail.
In other words, Americans in any town of this country could constitutionally be hung from the ceiling naked, sleep deprived, water-boarded, and all the rest — if the alleged national security justification was compelling. I did not believe our federal courts could reasonably be expected to agree with such a reading of the Constitution.(here
But of course, the power of the executive to run a secret police force and torture American citizens was the position of the Bush/Cheney administration – a position they argued explicitly in court. And it is what they did and got away with in the case of Padilla. If they had not lost Congress in 2006, they would have undoubtedly expanded that program of illegal detention and torture of US Citizens on US soil. And the courts allowed it.
Take a look at Padilla’s feet.
