Administration lawyers legally redefined torture so narrowly that severe interrogation became lawful.

Evidence

Lawyers in the Departments of Justice and Defense as well as at the Pentagon prepared documents that essentially legalized torturous practices. They further declared that the president, as commander in chief, was not bound by federal or international laws in the effort to protect the nation. In his memo, widely regarded as outrageous, Jay S. Bybee of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department defined torture in the narrowest terms as “inflicting intense pain or suffering of that kind that is equivalent to the pain that would be associated with serious injury so severe that death, organ failure, or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant bodily functions will likely result” … This definition of torture only as extreme injury placed virtually no limits on the use of severe physical and psychological methods of interrogation short of organ failure or death, essentially legitimizing torturous practices. This made interrogators immune from punishment for using such practices on the grounds that they were following orders from officials higher up in the chain of command. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2396

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the wider moral-disengagement scaffolding of chapter 2 (euphemistic labeling, diffusion of responsibility) doing the work around these legal memos.