Filling in the puzzle.

Although I've absorbed an enormous amount of coverage of the scandals surrounding the treatment of detainees in Iraq and elswhere, I haven't been able to escape a nagging feeling that something's been missing, or I've been missing something, that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

Reading Joe Conason's latest dispatch for Salon, it jumped right out at me...

The legal arguments that justified the Bush administration's undermining of the Geneva Conventions can be traced to John Ashcroft's Justice Department, where a top deputy to the attorney general drafted them during the months after 9/11.

Well, of course. That SOB's fingerprints had to be somewhere in this mess. And it turns out his role is pretty central.

According to a knowledgeable source, Defense Department Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith first sought the assistance of the military's Judge Advocate General Corps in fashioning policies that evaded or diluted the Geneva protections. But ranking JAG officers, who prided themselves on upholding those traditional human rights safeguards, strongly opposed the changes sought by Feith. He then turned to the Justice Department, where Yoo -- then a deputy assistant attorney general in the department's office of legal counsel -- was assigned to formulate arguments to evade the restrictions of the Geneva Conventions.

One of John Kerry's earliest and most popular applause lines was his promise to appoint an Attorney General "...who's name is not John Ashcroft!" That alone is a deal closer for me, and a good enough reason to go out and find five more votes for JK...