I am a lawyer who has practiced in Washington for more than 20 years. I’m not sure I have the words to describe my reaction upon reading the Bybee memo, but it’s fair to say it sent chills down my spine.

Lawyers are a cynical lot – it comes with the territory – but we all know that we have some basic obligations to our clients. One of them is to tell them the truth, and not to conceal facts or law that the client should know about. Even as you must represent your client zealously in disputes, you are required as an officer of the court not to hide adverse precedent. And failing to tell your client about cases that run against the client’s preferred result is a profound dereliction of duty.

In that context, the Bybee memo is a lawyer’s worst nightmare. It’s an F-minus in law school, a zero on the bar exam, grounds for firing a first-year lawyer for an utter lack of understanding of what the practice of law requires.

Salon’s is the most comprehensive, but really only deals with the memos, and ends with Abu Gharib.

Antiwar.com does similarly, with a few more data points.

TPM did the same thing, but a bit easier to read.

I can’t think of one that does the whole friggin’ shebang, though I would suspect Greenwald and Antiwar and Human Rights Watch might have one. Post a link if anyone finds one.

Does anyone know of a good and fairly comprehenisve timeline of events on this? I can’t get my head around the scope of this thing yet, and I think that would help. Something that shows key events, key decisions, key leaks, key votes, etc. Something that reenforces your letter to Hewitt, but includes all the other time based absurdities as well.