John Yoo: "Obviously" our waterboarding was torture!

Meant to flag this excellent catch by Emptywheel a few days back, from her study of the OPR documents.

He told us during his interview: “I had actually thought that we prohibited waterboarding. I didn’t recollect that we had actually said that you could do it.” He added:

[T]he waterboarding as it’s described in that memo, is very different than the waterboarding that was described in the press. And when I read the description in the press of what waterboarding is, I was like, oh, well, obviously that would be prohibited by the statute.

As Emptywheel goes on to note, CIA and DOJ disagreed about whether DOJ was kept informed about the details of our waterboarding practice, with DOJ not recalling any such updates. (And waterboarding as described in the Bybee memos remains torture, for reasons widely discussed on the basis of those memos.)

But that's a handy reference for the next time someone tells you we didn't torture KSM or Zubaydah: "really? because John Yoo thinks we did."