Via Talking Points Memo and other sources, today we got to read the infamous torture memo that sought to justify the horrifying abuses of detainees at the hands of the U.S. government at Guanatanamo, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and CIA secret “black site” prisons. It was written on March 14, 2003 by John Yoo, then a lawyer at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and now a law professor.

Yoo ignored existing U.S. law and international treaties ratified by Congress to argue that the President could authorize torture anyway using his powers as Commander in Chief. Originally classified SECRET, the 81-page memo has been declassified now as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union.

UPDATE: In an interview with Esquire, John Yoo now takes a different position: “I did not think as a matter of policy that it was a good idea for the military to use aggressive interrogations of the kind that would be permitted to the CIA.” Note that “aggressive” or “enhanced” interrogation is the Bush administration’s euphemism for torture.