Presidential powers and covering your ass

Bill over at Whiskey Bar looks at how the White House legal eagles justified the use of torture at Abu Ghraib Prison. It's long but you can read it here. I stole one paragraph from Bill.

Now I have to admit: The idea of using the Nuremberg trial as a field guide for committing war crimes and getting away with it has never occurred to me before. But then, I'm not a Bush administration legal appointee. It's probably worth remembering, though, that the Nuremberg Tribunal wasn't particularly impressed by the "I was only following orders" routine: 12 defendents hanged, 3 sentenced to life, 4 given long prison sentences, only 3 acquitted. If I were Donald Rumsfeld, I don't think I'd like those odds.

And you wonder why I call the Bush Administration a bunch of Nazis? Rat bastids.

Update 16:50: Meteor Blades at Daily Kos looks at this too here.