Michael Froomkin and Billmon both have good posts up about yesterday’s White House and Pentagon document dump. Froomkin concentrates on the order signed by Bush on Feb. 7, 2002, which contains what Froomkin refers to as the ” Royalist theory of Presidential power,” in point 2b: “I accept the legal conclusion of the attorney general and the Department of Justice that I have the authority under the Constitution to suspend Geneva as between the United States and Afghanistan, but I decline to exercise that authority at this time.” Also see this post on the OLC’s repudiation of it’s torture justification memo.
Billmon points out that none of the released documents cover the critical period during which most of the Iraqi torture occurred:
It also appears that neither the White House’s nor the Pentagon’s document dump extend much beyond the spring of 2003. This leaves out the critical period in the fall and winter of last year, when the Iraqi insurgency exploded into a major problem and the administration’s demands for better, more actionable intelligence jumped off the chart. According to Sy Hersh, this is when the Pentagon extended “Copper Green” – the Pentagon’s existing secret program for capturing and interrogating high-ranking Al Qaeda operatives – to Iraq.