"Justification via the law" is a bad phrase to use in this context because it mixes meanings. Nobody's spiritual salvation is even being talked about, and that is the only context in which justification according to the law is impossible and contrary to the Gospel. At issue is purely whether an interrogation technique falls under the category of torture, which is a matter of legal interpretation. If I accused you of copyright violations in this forum and you responded by quoting fair usage laws, it would hardly be appropriate for me to then claim your response was simply an attempt at justification according to the law.
1. You may be right that this is stretching things. Yet we can easily think of all sorts of ways in which people attempt to justify themselves before men via the law — yes, I did do x to y, but according to the letter of this law, x is not illegal, and thus right for me to do — which is a false conclusion, as legal ≠ right. When this mindset is in play, people easily walk away self-justified, thinking that as they were shown to not have broken the law, that they are good, not only with men, but with God. The phrase that keeps coming to mind — and yes, its context makes its use iffy as it is from the explanation to the 9th commandment, which by no means appears to apply here — is "show of right". That is all that the legal-so-OK argument is — a show of right — and those who falsely cling to that as self-defense are going to be quite immune from being shown that they just might have been in the wrong, and thus repent (should they really be in the wrong; I'm speaking in general and not just about this case) as they already have been certified to be in the right.
2. Your example using fair use laws isn't apt in this case, for except in those (no doubt done by "rogue elements") cases Pr Kirchner speaks of "when personnel violated the legal parameters without consent", I'm quite sure that those involved have been scrupulous in adhering to the
letter of the law. That is a very different matter, and one much more easily answered. Justification according to the law (human in this case, of course) is not showing that the law was actually followed/not broken, and thus simply not illegal, but using the
fact that the law was
not broken to then argue that that makes what was done right/correct/beyond criticism/whatever, a claim which that fact alone cannot bear.