From Washington Post

The Navy’s former general counsel warned Pentagon officials two years before the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that circumventing international agreements on torture and detainees’ treatment would invite abuse, according to a published report.

Legal theories granting the president the right to authorize abuse in spite of the Geneva Conventions were unlawful, dangerous and erroneous, Alberto J. Mora advised officials in a secret memo. The 22-page document was obtained by The New Yorker for a story in its Feb. 27 issue.

The memo from July 7, 2004, recounted Mora’s 2 1/2-year effort to halt a policy that he feared would authorize cruelty toward suspected terrorists.

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