Last Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that in late 2002 and early 2003 Bush administration lawyers rendered secret legal opinions that in waging the war on terror the administration could disregard U.S. law and treaties ratified by the United States prohibiting torture and cruel treatment. Apparently these opinions were leaked by military lawyers appalled by the prospect of the United States condoning torture.

On Tuesday, Attorney General John Ashcroft was grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee about the opinions. He did not deny that the opinions existed but refused to say whether he agreed with them or to give them to the committee. Despite Abu Ghraib, he asked the committee to take on faith his assurance that the administration had not indulged in torture or other action banned by law or treaty.

According to Ashcroft, these were just legal opinions prepared for his client the president and could not have contributed to the creation of a legal and moral environment which facilitated the Abu Ghraib atrocities. What is chilling about this is that Ashcroft had neither the judgment nor moral sense to squelch these opinions but apparently passed them on with the Justice Department’s blessing.

Of course neither Ashcroft, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld nor the president authorized or intended what happened at Abu Ghraib. But the attorney general, the nation’s top lawyer, should have had the imagination and good sense to steer the country clear of the legal and moral morass which these opinions, if taken literally, create.

In this time of honoring President Reagan it is jarring to think that our government would sanction cruel treatment verging on torture as official U.S. policy. Every regime we abhor, from Hitler’s Third Reich and Stalin’s “Evil Empire” to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, has defended its atrocities in the name of national security. The threat of terrorism is real and may at times require taking otherwise abhorrent action, as where a time bomb is ticking and only the suspect can lead us to where it is hidden so that it can be disarmed before a catastrophic explosion.

But the administration must find a way to meet extraordinary threats without making cruelty, verging on torture, the bureaucratic response to anyone we detain in the war on terror who we think might have useful information, whether in Guantanamo, Iraq or anywhere else under United States control. We need an attorney general who steers us clear of totalitarian cruelty instead of appearing to condone it.

David Snow, a retired judge and lawyer, lives in Surry.