Literary deconstruction and the Bush administration's legal reasoning

"Whether or not this meaning was intended by Congress, the way Bybee claims to find the meaning derives from an ungoverned and unscrupulous reading that uses—very selectively—dictionary definitions to produce arcane and obfuscating interpretations. It's like a parody of a deconstructive reading written by a hostile critic.

I will refrain from citing the next paragraph, which takes us into the meaning of "disrupt," as "to break asunder; to part forcibly; to rend." (Here we are back with his 1935 Webster's, and a definition my 1975 American Heritage declares "obsolete." What about a more usual definition, such as "to upset the order of"?) But Bybee needs to come out, at the end of his paragraph, with: "Those acts must penetrate to the core of an individual's ability to perceive the world around him, substantially interfering with his cognitive abilities, or fundamentally alter his personality."

Even Abu Ghraib doesn't make it to torture under this definition."