Via TPM comes confirmation in the Times that everything we heard from the Village on torture was--and I know you'll find this just as hard to believe as I did--kabuki, and that under the carefully crafted constititional Theory Of We Get To Do Whatever The Fuck We Want (or, in the original German, fuhrerprinzip), Bush is doing whatever the fuck he wants. Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen report:

Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations
When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations [Torture].

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion [so-called: Only a court can render an opinion], this one in secret.

As Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” [torture] treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion [sic], one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

The classified opinions [sic], never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bush’s second term and Mr. Gonzales’s tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil.

It depends on what the meaning of torture is, doesn't it? Don't you wish for the happy, innocent days of the Clinton administration, when the entire Beltway was convulsed, for years, over a blowjob?

As with everything about the criminal Bush regime, the only question is whether it's (1) awful or (2) vile beyond even our worst imaginings. Looks like the torture policies are behind door #2. So there's really no story here, is there?

Anyhow, I thought it would be helpful to go through and extract the euphemisms for torture in the article, as a prophylactic against the exercise in politics and the English Language that we are about to see. I'd use the phrase "tortured denials," but that wouldn't really be funny, would it?

From the headline:

1. Severe interrogations. Syn. Torture.

AP's ignorance of the basic facts of FISA remains astounding utterly typical:

The White House will not accept court review of eavesdropping plans before they are executed, according to a knowledgeable administration official.

As any child of six knows, yet well-paid and insured AP reporters Jordan and Kellman do not, Bush can get a retroactive warrant in 72 hours under FISA as it exists today. There is no question of review of eavesdropping plans "before they are executed."

Somebody please tell me what the rush is for, and why on earth anybody would take Bush seriously on this stuff?