Link: http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/10-years-later-our-first-step-toward-torture

Our country’s embrace of torture after 9/11 may have seemed like a quick one: one day we didn’t torture, and the next we did, with the so-called “torture memos” to blame for the rapid shift. But the reality is that proponents of “enhanced interrogation techniques” (and other euphemistically titled cruelties) had to overcome substantial barriers in their efforts to justify torture... On February 7, 2002, President Bush signed a memorandum, Humane Treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda Detainees, that became his administration’s opening volley against the laws prohibiting abusive interrogations. In it, he concluded that the Geneva Conventions—which specify minimum standards of humane treatment for everyone in times of armed conflict—somehow did not protect al Qaeda members detained by the United States.