ABC News is reporting that a gang of top Bush officials known as the “Principals” — but for whom a better moniker might be the “Sadists” — met, starting in 2002, to prescribe in detail which torture techniques, and what combinations, American interorogators could use on terror suspects.
The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed [that] some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.
At the time, the Principals included Dick Cheney, National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and John Ashcroft, a devout Christian who then served as U.S. attorney general.

What this group of high officials did in these meetings appears to have been not only horrifically immoral and unethical, but illegal and un-Constitutional:

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of “combined” interrogation techniques — using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time — on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

All of these officials — these suspects — were unavailable or refused to comment when contacted by ABC News.

Torture is illegal in the United States, and it can’t be made legal by a cabal around George Bush, or any president, just because they say so. Or at least that’s the way it used to be, back in the quaint old times before 2000, when Americans — especially Republicans — demanded that our elected leaders abide by the U.S. Constitution.