Michael Hayden should be hiring a lawyer and not publishing lies in the Wall Street Journal. He was on the Charlie Rose Show in 2007 swearing up and down that exactly 3 people were waterboarded. When I find that someone has lied to me, I don't believe anything else they say. Good lesson for the Wall Street Journal.

Actually, prohibiting torture and refusing to commit war crimes necessarily diminishes the effectiveness of these techniques since they won't be used anymore.

I would say, rather, that prohibiting the use of torture necessarily increases effectiveness since we will no longer have to parse the false and unreliable information those techniques yield.

Re: Lengths. Including, as TPMMuckracker points out, distorting for justification the research of a scientist's findings on sleep deprivation.

See, if they can scare you to death, then they think you'll STFU.

Fear-mongering -- last resort of the Scoundrel.

"...that exposing abusive tactics is likely..."

...that exposing TORTURES USED is likely...

"...necessarily diminishes the effectiveness of these techniques since they won't be used anymore."

...necessarily diminishes the effectiveness of TORTURE since IT won't be used anymore.

Torture will continue to be used. Happens every time I listen to Sarah Palin speak.

you haven't heard the worst of it...

found this over at fox news [online]:

David Rivkin, who served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, released a statement Friday saying the release of four memos provides a "great benefit" to the former president.

"This data is analyzed in great detail to establish that the use of these techniques does not inflict either physical or psychological damage," said Rivkin. "The conclusions (the) memos reach -- that the specific interrogation techniques used by the CIA did not constitute torture -- are eminently reasonable."

Rivkin argued that the documents were "well-written" and featured "careful and nuanced legal analysis." He said the United States did not use "brute force" and the memos prove detainees weren't tortured.

"In short, these memos go a long way towards rebutting shrill and unfair attacks on the integrity of Bush administration officials, and, more generally, on America's honor," he said.

read it and weep...

" ... that exposing abusive tactics is likely to 'diminish the effectiveness of these techniques.'"

How much more diminished can they be? We know they don't work. Period.

I would think that the ressurection of such tools shows a complete lack of research into what might constitute "modern" means of obtaining information from suspects. It seems like intelligence properly applied could make these "tools" as irrelevant as the iron maiden, thumbscrew, rack, and wheel.

The main thing we learned from the Bybee memo was what the CIA claimed to know about Abu Zabaydah - that he was a top officer with intimate knowledge of all AQ plots, that he was a bright and strong willed jihadist, that there was evidence of an immanent attack. You might think the screenwriters from "24" had written this. And what a contrast between this profile and the one offered by Corn and Izikoff, who describe him like the dumb cousin who gets to hold the clipboard.

"Attorney General Michael Mukasey" - isn't the conjunction a disgrace?

the lengths loyal Bushies went to rationalize and justify torture

Pretty precious how a few lefties with law degrees from state schools think they know more than the top lawyers recruited by the Bush administration. But Monday morning quarterbacking is you guys' specialty. That and trying to embarrass our country in front of the rest of the world by airing this stuff.

If the lawyers of the Bush administration had been recruited for their legal reasoning skills rather than their ideological purity, you might have a point.

That and trying to embarrass our country in front of the rest of the world by airing this stuff.

But we have the carefully reasoned, factually supported, and analysis of top lawyers recruited by the Bush administration telling us that this is not torture and all perfectly legal. What's to be embarrassed about? It should be celebrated!

It is the "torture program" that is new. Who cares about the friggin techniques? What matters is that there was a program of torture. The torture memos are hard evidence of the premeditated nature of the whole thing: an entire memo on the torture of one individual!

The point, as was stated over and over again in the memos, and in the Op-Ed today is that we need to be able to treat people so that they have no hope...no hope of anything, not even the hope of imminent death. It is the complete opposite of freedom or humanity or civilization.

Hey mhr, first of all you are wrong because the anthrax attacks happened afterward (BTW the official explanations are rubbish.) Other than that, our being safe was mostly a function of all the other security measures the whole world took after 9/11. The information from torture was so unreliable anyway little could be used. But even if some corner cutting is justified in emergencies, the process was corrupted into guards playing games with prisoners anyway (has everyone forgotten Abu Ghraib?)

And most of Bush's policies certainly made us less safe for the long haul because Al Qaeda and the Taliban regrouped in Afghanistan while Bush's misadventure in Iraq drained our our economic, human and political capital.

Second, there's no way to "prepare" for waterboarding.

I wouldnt think so, but if that's true, then why do our armed forces subject our own troops to waterboarding in SERE school?

Dont get me wrong - I definitely think waterboarding is torture. I just dont know if this point is correct.

Digress all you want. I love it! But, then, after trying to read one of the memos--wade through the spelling errors, strange type, etc., no one should be surprised if these two guys think the techniques won't be effective now. Not the brightest lights in the room.

Such sophistry in the WSJ. Info or no info, released or retained documents, one cannot "diminish" the effectiveness of techniques that are NOT effective. What is less than zero? Torture produces lies and fantasies, and they in turn not only do not help but can do harm.

Would you want your son, daughter, best friend, self or any American solider sent out on some cockamamie mission based on the hallucinations or desperate spinning of somebody who would say or do ANYTHING to stop the pain?

I'm pretty sure that everybody knows what types of torture the Bush Administration ordered (maybe with the exception of learning the torturee's worst fear and trying to exploit that). I can't see how the publication of these memos were a blow to our intelligence-gathering community.

The "blow" would be to the Justice Department officials who rationalized laws to favor what Bush, et al, wanted to do. I'm wondering if the CIA wanted the rationalization/justification in writing (after the penny ante convictions for Abu Ghraib) before they would touch anyone. CYA, on their part. They'd do it, but they weren't going to prison for it. The Bushies thought they could get by with it and they have so far. After all, you can't convict or even question someone who ignores a subpeona. They'll all just claim "privilege", which was the problem all along...they all thought they were above the law.

The reason Hayden and Moo-CaCa didn't want the data released is that it takes away their right not to testify before Congress. Obama's commentary also doesn't specifically prohibit prosecution of the higher-ups---and those higher-ups might also include Bush and Cheney.

It might also open the total can-o-worms that the Right simply can't afford to have opened; the "Pandora's Box" that kills off their "party" for all time....

The real importance of the release of these memos, is that it provides an official statement on which to base further FOIA requests. Information being in the public domain, but without an official release, is not enough, by the letter of the law.

Anyone saying that the "enhanced inttrogation techniques" are not torture should prove it by undergoing the complete procedure with sleep deprivation for a start and waterboarding at the end.
Then at least he'll know what he is talking about.

The memo writers, and their supporters, have constructed a framework in which what would be considered torture outside the framework, is considered enhanced interrogation techniques within the framework. Their rationale is that under carefully controlled conditions, these techniques will not cause long-term physical or psychological damage.

Consequently, the disclosure of the framework diminishes the effectiveness of the techniques and makes our country less safe, by their reasoning, because our enemies will now know that our torture is not torture. By this, I mean that a person who is waterboarded is fearful for his or her life and will then confess to everything. This person thinks he is being tortured. If this person knows, however, that the U.S. does not torture, but only interrogates in an enhanced way that is designed not to cause permanent harm to him, then he will not confess, because he is not being tortured.

I confess that I do not remember my Orwell enough to know if he captures this idea somewhere, but it certainly sounds Orwellian.