Jay Bybee deeply regrets authoring the legal opinions that gave the green light for the Bush administration to unleash its little army of sadists on various brown people (many innocent of any infraction at all, other than that of being Muslim and in the wrong place, which is near a hangable offense these days):

He said he was “proud of our opinions” at the Office of Legal Counsel, too, calling them “well researched” and “very carefully written.”

Still, he said the controversy surrounding his tenure there had been difficult.

“I have regrets because of the notoriety that this has brought me,” he said. “It has imposed enormous pressures on me both professionally and personally. It has had an impact on my family. And I regret that, as a result of my government service, that that kind of attention has been visited on me and on my family.”

So, yeah, it isn’t really the he regrets the torture of innocents, or the deaths that resulted from the torture he facilitated, but the fact that some people treat a torture apologist with disdain.  Which is completely uncivil.  And mean.  You know, people can be so cruel. 

Greenwald:

Just think about that. The so-called “government service” Jay Bybee did caused countless detainees to be subjected to systematized, medieval torture techniques designed to permanently break their mind and spirit. Innocent men spent years wasting away in a cage, with no due process of any kind, subjected to horrific and life-destroying abuse because of what Bybee authorized. For that work, he was rewarded with a life tenured, permanently-well-paying job as a federal appellate judge. But the only victim he recognizes in all of this is himself, and the only “regret” he has is the self-pitying objection that the dark, ugly and destructive work he did caused him to be subjected to some criticisms.

I blame the bloggers and the coarsening of our discourse.

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