The torture debate gets stupider

Guess who just decided to re-enter the torture debate? Yep, that's right, former President George W. Bush. I guess he saw all the fun Cheney was having blithely lying about anything and everything and said "me too." But surprise surprise Bush has decided to come down on the side opposing torture. No, just kidding, he thinks it's fucking awesome.

Bush spoke broadly about his decision-making after the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in March 2003.

"I vowed to take whatever steps that were necessary to protect you," Bush said.

'"The first thing you do is ask, what's legal?" he said. "What do the lawyers say is possible? I made the decision, within the law, to get information so I can say to myself, 'I've done what it takes to do my duty to protect the American people.' I can tell you that the information we got saved lives."

I would have thought that torturing terrorists for the purpose of trying to link al-Qaeda to Iraq was a tremendous waste of time. Maybe he was talking about that whole torture/time travel scenario that Karl Rove posited.I did like that he first asked "what's legal". I mean sure the way he really asked it sounded more like "this is what we're doing, come up with any justification" and the lawyers memo's basically said "sure this won't hold up in court, but who's got the balls to sue us?", but Bush asked. He wasn't even told by Cheney to "shut the fuck up" when he asked either, so that's like a double ask.

I'm just so glad Bush has decided to re-enter the political debate with his own brand of mewing justification of his failures in front of prescreened audiences who signed loyalty oaths. I mean it shows just how much he is willing to stand up to scrutiny.