There's no story here:

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated [tortured] by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques [torture] -- using different techniques during interrogations [torture], instead of using one method [of torture] at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

But this is the first time sources have disclosed that a handful of the most senior advisers in the White House explicitly approved the details of the [torture] program. According to multiple sources, it was members of the Principals Committee that not only discussed specific plans and specific interrogation methods, but approved them.

Lawyers in the Justice Department [good Christianists all, I assume] had written a classified memo, which was extensively reviewed, that gave formal legal authority to government interrogators to use the "enhanced" questioning tactics [torture] on suspected terrorist prisoners. The August 2002 memo, signed by then head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee, was referred to as the so-called "Golden Shield" for CIA agents, who worried they would be held liable if the harsh interrogations [torture] became public.

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this [torture] in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

Then-National Security Advisor Rice, sources said, was decisive. Despite growing policy concerns -- shared by Powell -- that the [torture] program was harming the image of the United States abroad, sources say she did not back down, telling the CIA: "This is your baby. Go do it."

So much of the Village depravity and corruption has been known for so long by anyone who's been paying attention, that it seems pointless to write anything at all when our famously free press finally gets round to being shocked, shocked--that the bar has been lowered all the way to the Ninth Circle of Hell.

Truly, as Krugman says, this is the age of the anti-Cassandra.

Of course they all knew about it, and not only did they enjoy it, they probably passed around all the juicy bits from the videos to their fellow 24/7 fans.

Let's not forget that the flip side of Versailles was the Bastille, shall we?

So, now can we talk about the gulags and the disappeared?

No, I didn't think so. Sorry.

NOTE Condi for Vice President! A vote for torture is a vote to keep the country safe and free!