THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

When a man instrumental in creating the legal cover for torture, a man who has devoted his life to destroying the American legal system, a man like John Yoo says the CIA torture program went too far, you know the CIA was really getting into it.

Former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo said the sleep deprivation, rectal feeding and other harsh treatment outlined in a U.S. Senate report last week could violate anti-torture laws.

"If these things happened as they're described in the report ... they were not supposed to be done. And the people who did those are at risk legally because they were acting outside their orders," Yoo said on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS."

As deputy assistant U.S. attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel in 2002, Yoo co-wrote a memo that was used as the legal sanction for what the CIA called its program of enhanced interrogation techniques after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The memo said only prolonged mental harm or serious physical injury, such as organ failure, violated the Geneva Convention's ban on torture. Aggressive interrogation methods like waterboarding fell short of that mark.

Yoo's comments on Sunday contrasted with those of Cheney and former national security officials who invoke his memo to argue that the harsh treatment of detainees was legal.

"They specifically authorized and OK'd what we did," Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"No one tortured anyone else," former CIA counterterrorism head Jose Rodriguez said on "Fox News Sunday."

The Senate Intelligence Committee's review of 6.3 million pages of CIA documents, released on Tuesday, found that some captives were deprived of sleep for more than a week, at times with their hands shackled above their heads, while others were abused sexually.

"Looking at it now, I think of course you can do these things cumulatively or too much that it would cross the line of the anti-torture statute," Yoo said on the C-SPAN television network.

Joh Yoo moved legal heaven and earth to justify torture so if he said they went too far you know it is. After all, John Yoo wrote the book on it. But he made one mistake. He said,"they were acting outside their orders", as if obeying their orders would excuse them. The Nuremburg Tribunals and all subsequent prosecution made it quite clear that just following orders was no excuse for torture, ever.