Assuming for the sake of argument that the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatmentor Punishment does apply to U.S. conduct outside of U.S. territory, (though as I noted before the Office of Legal Counsel lawyersthought it did NOT), the May 30, 2005 OLC memosigned by Steven Bradbury concluded that the relevant standard for determining when the CIA had crossed the line would be the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition of executive conduct that “shocks the conscience.”

So how do you determine what “shocks the conscience”? Whose conscience applies? Steven Bradbury’s? John Yoo’s? Yours or mine?

Not surprisingly, the memo says that there is no specific test for shocking the conscience, but that the case law is best read to require a determination of whether the conduct “is arbitrary in a constitutional sense” and involves conduct “intended to injure in some way unjustifiable by any governmentinterest,” quoting a 1998 Supreme Courtcase, County of Sacramento v. Lewis.

So if the executive believes it has an interest in causing the injury, and CIA officers aren’t doing this simply for their own sadistic pleasure, that means it’s okay?

The most brutal torture is almost always undertaken for some purpose — usually to extract information — rather than purely out of sadism. Does that make it legal?

In its memo, the Office of Legal Counsel seems to say that it does:

I don’t know about you, but the techniques described in these memos — repeated waterboarding (drowning); stresspositions; slamming a prisoner’s headrepeatedly against a wall by the collar; 180 hours straight of sleepdeprivation while on a “calorie-restricted diet” and in shackles; and being locked in a tiny “confinement box” with insects crawling around — that shocks my conscience.

Anyone else?