Brennan is a former senior CIA official who was once considered by Obama for agency director

There is your answer right there.

Indict them all and let them clear their names in court before a jury of 12 Americans.

The issue is not who these other countries were. If you're Polish, Romanian, Italian, Swedish, Syrian, Egyptian, etc. you already know the "who". What you don't know is what your intelligence agencies enabled, and it's very possible that they didn't either. If it turned out, for example, that we used iron maidens and bamboo shoots at black sites, redacting Poland or Romania doesn't mitigate anything.

jim (above at 2:31) is right. Brennan has a vested interest in what was going on, and might have been in a position to cover up or otherwise mitigate damage had he been selected for the CIA leadership that eventually went to Panetta. So when Obama pursued second thoughts and went with Panetta instead of Brennan, Brennan had to have a Plan B.

So, we are seeing Plan B. What else can he do? Since he is not Top Dog, he has to call in all his markers and raise 'Holy Hell'.

Those memos really do need to be released into the public venue. We need to know exactly what was discussed and more importantly, how torture and our prior commitment against torture were redefined in an Alice Through The Looking Glass kind of way for the express purpose of giving permission to use it.

These documents remove the last of the wiggle room on whether or not the "enhanced interrogations" were torture. As evidence what we've heard so far is hearsay. This is actual admissible evidence in no uncertain terms about what was authorized and what methods were actually used - with names, dates, and pointers to the skeletons.

I can't imagine that the paper or video trail was actually destroyed. It's archived and these docs will point to where.

Several factors caused the "I want to torture, too" reflex that grasped various government officials. But it's worth drawing a distinction between two motives:

1. A general sense of panic and a need to rally after 9/11. Cheney the Paranoid stated there were many more plots ready for launch - and that all options were on the table in combating Al Qaeda.
Thus we became that which we feared, and people were practising their Buchenwald manners from police precincts to 24.

2. Post-invasion, Iraq. They had convinced themselves that they would find ample evidence of WMD, and that the pre-emptive strike would thereby get instant justification.
When that evidence proved elusive, they adopted a no holds barred policy in unearthing anything that would provide what they needed. Leading us to Abu Ghraib, round up razzias throughout Iraq, massive use of excessive force, and even "the politicization of WMD evidence" as Kay called it when he resigned.

It's those who acted according to the second motive who deserves intense investigation and prosecution. Yes, an ideal state would manage to withstand the impulse to "go mediaeval" also under (1), but when was the USA, or any state, ideal?

The manipulation, pure and simple, that lies behind (2), and the many official lies that were offered when questions were asked, is cause for investigation and prosecution. That was deliberate and inhuman - to save reputations, not the USA.

Why do we -want- to release these memos?

Isn't embarrassing (at least) the people who allegedly broke the law the very idea? I am hoping that the rest of the world can start to trust the US again on many subjects; but I hope that they never trust us again when we ask them to help us commit torture.

Let's do whatever we can to destroy that specific trust once and for all.

Rahm Emanuel let the cat out of the bag. Here's the entire Obama strategy and intent relative to the Constitution and we, the "them"

Confidence is the name of the game for a new president trying to calibrate his message to match the moment, searching for a way to inspire a recession-weary country and convey hope that better times are ahead. It is a tricky balance to strike. If he sounds too gloomy, he could further depress a nation desperate for any sign of progress. If he sounds too optimistic, he risks looking as if he's trying to pull something over on the nation, a different sort of Confidence Man.

"You don't want to overlook the misery and not look like you're in touch with the challenges they're facing," said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff. "On the other hand, you've got to give them a sense that there's a light on the horizon that you're pointing to and it's visible."

Smoke and mirrors. We are "them", and they - officials elected by we the them - are NOT us.

A full release without any redactions whatsoever is the only solution, thus:

1.) America cannot continue to go forward by sweeping its past under the rug. If she sets this precedent, then the Pandora's Box is not only open; its lid is torn from the hinges forever---and we become a permanent display in the world's eye as an habitual rogue nation.

2.) An unfettered redaction opens the way for foreign governments to prosecute members of the U.S. intelligence and military communities who committed illegal acts against their citizenry, which is permissible under International Law and the various Treaties to which the United States is a signatory. Anything short of this merely adds further illumination to the hypocritical criminality of our nation, its elected officials, and by extension---each and every last one of us. As in "you and me" us.

3.) By exposing those beyond our borders who aided and/or participated in what amounts to nothing less than a blantant, organized plan---with both malice and intent---to commit crimes against humanity, we would offer the peoples of the world their legitimate right to hold to the fullest account possible those members of their own citizenry who have committed such illegal acts. Even the suggestion that we, as a unique nation among nations, attempt to withhold information regarding what clearly may amount to serious violations of the Law---whether that Law be a Polish Law, a Romanian Law, an Italian Law, a Swedish Law, a Syrian Law, an Egyptian Law, a Libyan Law, or even a Thai Law---is to commit an Obstruction of Justice, again with both Malice and Intent, on the same level as the multiple commissions and acts regurgitated upon the world stage by the administration of G.W. Bush and R.B. Cheney.

If we, as a nation, allow ourselves to become as those two were during their global reign of terror, then we fully and admittedly deserve to become the entire civilized world's true enemies---and all that that implies.

Now---maybe a few of you can finally understand a wee bit of what Ward Churchill was trying to tell you when he spoke of "the chickens coming home to roost"....

Redaction won't help when the names of other countries who helped in this process are known through other means. I suggest that the CIA and Bush/Cheney made promises that the procedures would never be revealed as a means of securing cooperation from those countries.

I do not understand how further concealment is possible. Knowing the horrors should be enough for any decent human being, but the prospect of becoming a co-conspirator with Bush Administration officials should make any reasonable human being take whatever steps are necessary to bring the United States into compliance with its laws and treaty obligations.

The solution is too simple: just redact their names and any identifying details.

I think the argument is, that countries known from other sources to have cooperated, will be embarrassed when their citizens know better how vile the programs were that they cooperated with.

briefer rmd: What Danp said.

Release the memos.

Remember what Bush said about spying on Americans illegally - if you're doing nothing wrong, then you've got nothing to hide and no problems.

Release the memos. They claim they've done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide.

There doesn't seem to be much debate anymore whether we tortured people or not. The only question now is whether we are going to come clean. I could give a rats ass about people in our government who tortured, and I sure as hell don't care about other countries who did it. It's wrong, morally, ethically, religiously and, from what I can gather, it doesn't even work. At the very least, we need to know the truth about what was done, the effectiveness of what was done, and what we can do in the future to prevent this behavior from continuing.