Sometime in 2003 and somewhere is the bowels of the White House a cabal of attorneys are meeting to discuss 'issues', issues about the Constitution and individual rights and how to stay out of jail later on, while still keeping your job in tact.  These were THE issues of the day.

Yoo called the session to order.

Bybee thanks for letting me take the lead on this meeting today. And Al, always good to see you. And by the way Al, how is our President today? Yoo opened.

Rested, Yoo, as always, rested. Al G responded.

Al, did he get that last series of Memoranda? Yoo inquired.

Gonzo made that weird scrunchy face expression he always does when he is forced to come up with a review of his previous meeting with w. Well, in a manner of speaking. I mean the entire packet was over five hundred pages. We first diluted them into three page summaries. He immediately sent me out of the Oval and I then came back with one page summaries.. and well, yes, I read them to him while he was on the phone with...

Who the FUCK he was on the phone with is beyond our subject matter today Al.

That's alright, I really cannot recall anyway.

Okay BOYS, we are here to take a new look, WE MUST THINK OUT OF THE BOX, so to speak. Now remember in the first year of law school we were always taught that no matter how weird a position is, no matter how absurd it sounds, there is always some

You continued: Problem.  We supposedly went to war because

1.          Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.  There were no  weapons of mass destruction. Over four hundred calls went out of our office...er... the Vice President's office during the first month of the invasion to the officers on the front line.  I mean HE knew they had the goddamn things because he set up the sale himself when he ran Haliburton. Jesus Christ.  How in the fuck was he supposed to know Saddam double crossed him and sold all the weaponry to Syria.   Ok. Ok. We kind of took care of that.  I mean Rove here simply put out the message that EVERYONE KNEW SADDAM HAD THE WEAPONS, so everyone was wrong. The Brits, er...everyone. So we made a mistake.

2.          Iraq had a nuclear program. Iraq was developing a delivery system and America was under threat of attack. Kind of immediate anyway.  Well Plame did a good job erasing that rationale.  Some liberal c.... is not going to destroy this administration.

3.          Iraq had ties to Al Quida.  Now here is where we have some elbow room.  There is a way to make what is wrong, RIGHT. And that way is to DEBRIEF.

So this meeting is about DEBRIEFING and you have all been briefed about the debriefing so I would like to now ask that you brief us as to the debriefing methods available AND PLEASE BE BRIEF.

The vp had just sauntered into the meeting and everyone stood up. Stood up and saluted. HAIL MASTER they all sang.

Well how is everyone today?  Al, where is the president today?

Well Mr. Vice President he is on vacation in Texas again.

What is that anyway. Eight months of the year he is at Camp David or Texas. Who sets his agenda anyway? Yoo asked.

I do, dickyc commanded while sneering at Yoo. Now sit down and shut up!!!

Now we are discussing debriefing here today and I need some memorandums. After 9/11 we saw, that in spite of of the hundreds of billions of dollars we spent on national security in the years up to 9/11, on that morning 19 men with box cutters and airline tickets came into the country and killed 3,000 people....We must do everything we can think of to make the nation safe. That's our number one obligation. The, the oath that the president an I take when we're sworn in up there on Capital Hill is to always support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And we've done everything within our power and within the Constitution to in fact pursue that objective. (Suskind 68-69)

Now the only way that we are going to defend that Constitution and this Country is to make sure we are always in power. I mean those goddamnable liberals will just tax us to death and let all the terrorists out of prison and write books making me look bad.

But when everything seems lost, that is the time to act. The problem here is doubt. People are beginning to doubt us. Now I took care of Donahue. That Matthews has changed his tune. Hah! The Dixie Chicks aint ever goin back to Dixie. We have OUR people at the New York Times, finally. Everything is just goin fine.

But we are in Iraq just like we promised before we ever took the oath. Hah! But we need some reasons for all this. Some good solid looking evidence that we did the right thing. Even though, of course we did do the right thing. I mean we have better control over ME oil. All our repub contractors are set to make billions off of this war. Everything is in place.  I mean how hard is it to get evidence.  If OJ got out of his mess, we sure the hell can get out of this one.

Everyone laughed. 

Back to debriefing. Now everyone here has seen The Manchurian Candidate--because I screened it for all of us last week. The dirty commie Chinese and Koreans take our honorable soldiers into some hell hole and after a month or so, our heroes are brainwashed. The commies get what they want.

Well, this film was partially based on fact. The commies would get our men and torture them to say anything they wanted them to say. Good solid videos of our men lying about stuff.

We had a Korean training program.  Put tens of thousands of our soldiers through that training as to how best to defend against mind fucks from the enemy.

Well now its time to get our own mind fucks going.  YOU MEAN TO TELL ME YOU CANNOT GET THOSE SAND NI......S TO ADMIT AL QUAEDA IS AND WAS CONNECTED TO SADDAM? Bullshit!!!  Now our Constitution is not going to be used to keep us out of office. It's un-American and surely in violation of the Republican Party's Platform. Hah!

We need to put these aaaarabs under the gun and get the goddamn testimony we need, no matter what it takes.  We do not torture, THEY say. Hah!!! What a bunch of bullshit.  Now how are we going to turn this around?  Anyone.

Rove stood up.  Well vocabulary is all important here Mr. Vice President. I mean we do not torture. We use enhanced interrogation techniques.

Everyone applauds.

What about the Geneva Conventions Al?  Inquired dickyc.

Well I have prepared a memo on that master. And let me say sir that giving me the ultimate answer before I did this research really helped me. Basically, the Geneva Conventions are old. They are not modern. And we live in a modern age. And besides that, they only applied to Germans and Japanese. And we sure the heck are not dealing with Jews here. Hahahahaha.  And our president is a different president than the president who signed on to the treaties involving those conventions. And it was a different Senate back then. So my memo basically says Geneva, Sheneva. Who really cares?  And it is so hard to recall all that ancient history anyway.

Very fine Al, dickyc responded. Very fine.

Now we will come back to exactly what the enhanced interrogation techniques can do for us in a minute. But what about this Eight Amendment problem?  Cruel and Unusual Punishment?  Is that not the term?

Bradbury came to the fore, reading from his memo:

Because the high value detainees on whom the CIA might use enhanced interrogation techniques have not been convicted of any crime, the substantive requirements of the Eighth Amendment would not be relevant here, even if we assume that Article 16 has application to the CIA's interrogation program.  (Empty Wheel, May2, 2009)

Wow, dicky c exclaimed.  THINKING OUT OF THE BOX!!! That's it. Fuck the Eighth Amendment. No convictions, the goddamnable thing does not apply. Bradbury are you related to that science fiction guy?  That is the kind of back bone we need around here.  Hell we can do anything we wish to these detainees. They have not been convicted of anything. Ha!

Just then Douglas Feith walked in.

I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU TO WAIT IN THE GODDAMN CAR YOU FUCK!!!  Dickyc exclaimed.

Uh, Master, I just wanted to follow up on our problem at Gitmo. [T]his is my opinion, even though they were giving information and some of it was useful, while we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between AI Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful in establishing a link between AI Qaeda and Iraq. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link, there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.

Dougie's boss, Paul Wolfowitz piped up: I have real concerns about the insufficient intelligence production at GTMO. (May 5, 2009 Empty Wheel)

Well what are we going to do about this gentlemen? Dickyc inquired.

Somebody give a run down of the particular acts of torture...er....enhanced interrogation techniques we have used so far.

Feith stood up again and began to read:

Following  the Secretary's December 2, 2002 authorization, senior staff  at GTMO

began drafting a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) specifically for the use ofSERE

techniques in interrogations.  The draft SOP itself stated that "The premise behind this is that the

interrogation tactics used at U.S. military SERE schools are appropriate for use  in real-world

interrogations.  These tactics and  techniques are used at SERE school to 'break' SERE detainees.

the same tactics and techniques can be used to break real detainees during interrogation"  The

draft "GTMO SERE SOP" described how to slap, strip, and place detainees in stress positions.  It

also described other SERE techniques, such as "hooding," "manhandling," and "walling"

detainees.

On December 30,2002,  two instructors from the Navy SERE school arrived at

GTMO.  The next day,  in a session with approximately 24 interrogation personnel, the two

SERE instructors demonstrated how to administer stress positions, and various slapping

Techniques.  According to two interrogators, those who attended the training even broke off  into

pairs to practice the techniques.

Now this begins to describe what we have done so far. We have the manuals, the techniques, the training and the trainers. And they have been hard at work. The specific acts include the following:

1.     Hooding--hoods are placed over the victim's er...detainee's head.

2.     Walling--Plowing a detainee into a wall

3.     Stripping--the interrogators strip the detainee's naked

4.     Slapping--what it says

5.     Manhandling--a term of art so to speak

6.     Humiliating--shaming the detainee in any way possible

7.     Phobic treatments--if the detainee is afraid of something, like dogs, well....

8.     Stress positions--hang them upside down, sideways, make them stand all day

9.     Waterboarding--a wonderful technique for making the rats feel like they are drowning

What?  What is this waterboarding? inquired dickyc.  I kind of like this technique.  How many times has this been used?

Er...a few I guess, replied dougy.

Well you listen to me, I do not care if you have to perform this water torture thing a hundred times. Goddamnit!! I want some testimony linking al Qaeda to Saddam.

And I want some memos confirming that all of our torture techniques are legal. And I wish them ASAP!!

With that the meeting ended.