When the head of the CIA’s torture unit decided to destroy videotapes of his team’s horrific work, he unwittingly set in motion a series of events that led to the release this week of the most massive, detailed documentation of unlawful behavior by high-ranking government officials and intentional infliction of pain on noncombatants by the United States government since the Civil War era. Here is the backstory.

One of the reasons repeatedly stated by President George W. Bush for the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the maintenance of “torture rooms” by Saddam Hussein. While making this very argument, Bush was secretly authorizing CIA agents to engage in similar unlawful behavior for similar purposes: intelligence and deterrence. Bush sounded credible when he claimed that his administration adhered to federal and international legal standards.

Source: Andrew Napolitano, www.wnd.com