I completely agree. I heard all the Bush administration's excuses . . . it's not quite over the boundary of torture, it's merely agonizing, humiliating, and terrifying; it's all right because they're not American citizens and therefore the Constitution doesn't protect them . . . and all that I could think was that a government official who comes up to those edges is one who wants to torture. And that's not someone who should have power over other human beings. The policy I would prefer is more in the spirit of keeping kosher: If you feel any need to debate whether an act does or does not count as torture, you shouldn't do it.

The Obama administration's hesitancy on this subject deeply disappoints me. They're proposing to let off the CIA agents who had been told that what they were doing was legal? You know, Americans used to be contemptuous of saying "I vass only followink orders!" The people who said that were villains. Now Americans have taken to that kind of villainy.

I understand the frustration. These are war crimes. They were committed. Prosecutions must follow.

I also understand Obama's frustration. For the first time in our lives we have a chance for a coherent energy and health policy. But because of this poison left over from Bush it may derail everything he's trying to do. Bush didn't just leave him a wrecked economy, he's left his this oozing sore.

I do feel the comparison to Nazi era "just following orders" is not exactly on point. The Nuremberg laws that came out of Germany were stunning in their break from established German law. And it was a broad swath of laws that covered all aspects of society. Also, Germany had only been a "democracy" for less than two decades. They didn't have a department of Justice so people had no expectation that sound law would emerge from the ruling party. And finally, the Nazi laws were so egregious that lawyer or not you could see that they "shocked the conscience".

Contrast that with a Justice Department that until Bush had been fairly a-political and despite some failures had done a pretty good job of enforcing and interpreting the nation's laws. If I were a C.I.A. officer I would not expect such bad law to emerge from the department. I would feel pretty confident that this was good law. Most C.I.A. agents are not lawyers.

Contrast that with the F.B.I. agents, many of whom are lawyers, who said this is not right, this is not legal and refused to take part. But because the program was classified they couldn't go public, and when the director took his concerns and objects to the Dept. of Justice Gonzales took no action.

Did you see today's piece comparing Cheney and Churchill?

I did indeed see Sullivan's wonderful piece about Churchill and Cheney. Here is the latest doozy from the Gang of Torturers in the White House. Condi Rice is as loathsome as the rest of these animals. She outdoes Nixon. This was said before a group of students at Stanford.

"The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations under the Convention Against Torture... The United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture, and so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture," - Condi Rice.

At some point, is it possible to become so loathsome that you just burst into flames?

If not, it should be.

That's what the Victorians called it.