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On Monday night, John Yoo, a lawyer in the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice, appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. In April 2008, Yoo's now-infamous torture memo was released to the public in response to the 老澳门开奖结果's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Larry Siems, author of , responds to the interview.

For me, the one astonishingly honest moment of Jon Stewart鈥檚 with John Yoo two nights ago, a , came about 2 1/2 minutes in, when Stewart, in his way, first raises the subject of the legal memos Yoo authored.

鈥淚 read the briefs that you wrote on torture 鈥斺�� he begins. 鈥淎nd by the way, I didn鈥檛 finish them, so don鈥檛 tell me how it ends.鈥�

Yoo laughs for a second, and then grows serious, leans forward, and says emphatically, 鈥淣ot well for anyone.鈥�

If Stewart had just stopped right there and pressed Yoo to unpack that remarkable admission, we might have watched a significant landmark on the road to accountability.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 interesting,鈥� he might have said. 鈥淣ot well for anyone. Let鈥檚 explore that. You鈥檙e saying, not well for those we tortured. Not well for the torturers. Not well for those who authorized or rationalized the torture. Not well for you. Not well for those who came after you, and for those now struggling with how to prosecute cases tainted by torture. Not well for me. Not well for your fellow citizens here in the studio. Not well for the country. Not well for anyone on earth.

[Pause]

鈥淲ow. Great. I tell you what: let鈥檚 forget these note cards and just spend the next half hour talking about that.鈥�

Instead, Yoo, and the conversation, quickly retreated onto his turf, a mixture of musings on the vast elasticity of presidential powers and a that 鈥渨e had amazingly captured the number three guy in al-Qaeda, which is an amazing coup鈥� and 鈥渢he guy was resistant to interrogation.鈥� Stewart, who at the outset conceded the argument on legal questions, saying he found the constitutional questions 鈥済obblety-gook,鈥� never challenged , and never brought the conversation back down to that early, startlingly human level.

The fact is, 鈥渘ot well for anyone鈥� is the way torture and abuse always ends. Admitting that this is how it has ended in America鈥檚 post-9/11 experiments with torture is a huge step, and Stewart should鈥檝e just let Yoo, who leaned forward to say this, actually take it.