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“WE HAVE been through a dark and painful chapter in our history,” said Barack Obama on Thursday April 16th, as he released memos issued by the Office of Legal Counsel during the previous administration. Dark indeed. The memos lay out, in bland legalese, the reasoning that led Bush administration lawyers to approve the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, which are commonly held to be torture. Mr Obama had apparently been mulling for weeks whether to release the memos. In a thoughtful statement he said that America has a right to a certain amount of secrecy in its national-security operations. In this case, however, the techniques described have already been well reported and documented. As important, the practices have been ended. Thus full transparency was best.