It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas an impeachable offense

There is now some but not conclusive evidence that the President himself authorized abuse of prisoners by Executive Order. This from Asia Times:

McClellan also insisted there is "no executive order relating to interrogation techniques. When it comes to military detainees and interrogation methods, those are determinations made by the Department of Defense."

However the ACLU released copies late Monday of a two-page FBI e-mail message dated May 22 that refers repeatedly to an executive order signed by Bush.

The message "states that the president directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and 'sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc.'," but [it] bars [FBI] agents from employing those techniques, the ACLU said in a statement.

You can find the ACLU memos here. This memo is particularly interesting.

Again, there is no smoking gun, just lots of interesting questions. We should not prejudge what the President did nor did not do until there is further proof. But my view can be stated fairly simply: If the President did authorize inhumane treatment of prisoners, whether or not his lawyers could claim that this was not technically in violation of various international agreements to which the United States made numerous reservations, these acts are morally unconscionable. He has shamed the country and should be removed from office.