Since waterboarding is not intended to cause death or organ failure only the panicked gag reflex associated with drowning it was deemed not to be torture.
The "torture memo" and related legal opinions were considered so unprofessional that Bybee's replacement to head the OLC, Jack Goldsmith, himself a conservative Republican, took the extraordinary step of withdrawing them after he was appointed in October 2003.
However, Goldsmith was pushed out of his job after a confrontation with Cheney's counsel Addington, and the later appointment of Bradbury enabled the Bush White House to reinstate many of the Yoo-Bybee opinions.
Last month, Newsweek reported that Yoo and Bybee had avoided any disciplinary recommendations because a draft report by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility had been rewritten to remove harsh criticism that the two lawyers had violated professional standards, softening the language to simple criticism of their judgment.
The weaker language meant that the Justice Department would not refer the cases to state bar associations for possible disbarment proceedings.
Cheney's frank comments on "This Week" corroborating that Yoo and Bybee "had done what we asked them to do" suggest that former Bush administration officials are confident that they will face no accountability from the Obama administration for war crimes.
Though the ABC News interviewer Jonathan Karl deserves some credit for posing the waterboarding question to Cheney, it was notable that Karl didn't react with any shock or even a follow-up when Cheney pronounced himself a fan of the torture practice. Cheney's waterboarding endorsement was only a footnote in ABC's online account of the interview.
Surely, if a leader of another country had called himself "a big supporter of waterboarding," there would have been a clamor for his immediate arrest and trial at The Hague.
That Cheney feels he can operate with such impunity is a damning commentary on the rule of law in the United States, at least when it comes to the nation's elites.
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