It's one of the most important documents yet released in the battle against detainee torture and abuse by the United States. It's the memo written by then-Navy general counsel, Alberto J. Mora,
desperately trying to stop the moral and strategic disaster of the decision by the president to endorse abuse and torture in the war on terror. It's contained in this must-read Jane Mayer piece that contains some of the best reporting yet on how a cabal within the Pentagon highjacked America's honor and circumvented regular procedures to enable torture. Read both the piece and the memo, and then recall Rumsfeld's testimony to the Congress after Abu Ghraib and the president's repeated insistence that "we do not torture." Ponder. And repeat. I'm still absorbing the material before further comment. More later. Marty Lederman has a brief reaction to some of what we have just learned here. One note of thanks: Mayer's work on this subject, along with Dana Priest's at the Washington Post, are examples of impassioned, dogged journalism at its best. The truth will out in the end - thanks to reporting like theirs'.