BYU graduate promotes torture

Jay S. Bybee, a graduate of BYU and the BYU law school, authored the infamous justice department memo which claims broad methods (including torture) are justified in interrogations of terrorism suspects. Naturally, Orrin Hatch supports Bybee's arguments. The new President of the University of Utah (also a BYU grad) has also spoken in support of Bybee. Bybee was appointed by Bush last year to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. From the Salt Lake Tribune (today):

As the assistant U.S. Attorney General over the Office of Legal Counsel, Bybee signed an August 2002 memo advising President Bush he could order just about any means of interrogation necessary to get captured suspects in the war on terror to talk, and the commander-in-chief would be immune from legal prosecution or congressional repercussions. Now widely known as the 'Bybee memo,' the advice is being blamed for fostering a belief among soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq that torture was not only legally justified, it was encouraged from the uppermost levels of U.S. command. The White House has consistently denied Bush ever endorsed torture, and this week took the highly unusual step of publicly disavowing the legal advice given by its own Justice Department, calling it 'abstract academic theory.' [snip] A day after the White House denunciation, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch took to the Senate floor to declare the legal arguments outlined in the Bybee memo "do make sense" and were "well-reasoned opinions." "For somebody to say carte blanche that the Geneva Conventions apply and should apply to everything, that flies in the face of not only international law, it flies in the face of what is happening in this situation," said the Utah Republican, who added he didn't necessarily agree with all the arguments in the memo.