You almost have to be impressed that Karl Rove can spew this nonsense with a straight face:
Thursday, when President Obama said that the Bush administration's attitude towards enhanced interrogation and so forth, had been, quote, "anything goes," was intellectually dishonest. I mean, they didn't even read the memos that they released themselves. You may disagree with the legal reasoning behind Yoo and Bradbury and others writing those memos, but those memos are an attempt to constrain behavior, to define what cannot be done and what can be done. Not, quote, "anything goes."
Well, sure. They were just trying to constrain behavior so they wouldn't cross a line into the unacceptable. Like when John Yoo explained why it might be okay to crush the testicles of a suspect's child:
... Cassel: If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty
Cassel: Also no law by Congress -- that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo...
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.
But to be perfectly fair, it really wasn't an "anything goes" torture policy -- after all, they did have their limits:
Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.
Someone needs to ask Mr. Rove if it's possible that crushing a child's testicles could lead to an impairment of a bodily function.