Deputy Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel John Yoo’s “March 14, 2003 memorandum essentially states that the President [Bush] is free to override any international treaty in order to conduct his war on terror. It also goes to great lengths to argue that any U.S. law forbidding harsh or torturous techniques would not apply to Guantanamo Bay. Even if one would argue that these were simply memoranda and not a direct authorization to inflict torture and inhumane treatment on detainees, other factors still lend to the theory that high-ranking members of the DOJ [Department of Justice] as well as others in the Administration are culpable for illegal interrogation methods at Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.”
– M. Cherif Bassiouni, The Institutionalization of Torture by the Bush Administration, Page 122