Just bookmarking this:
As for whether the torture “worked,” Cheney has long maintained that
information extracted from tortured detainees helped prevent attacks and
save lives. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report says otherwise,
and it has a lot of company. “Reports from the Department of Justice, Senate Armed Services Committee, and the C.I.A.’s Inspector General
… completely discredit the Bush administration’s long-standing claims
that torture prevented attacks against America and helped capture high
value terrorist targets,” notes Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress.
The
reason Cheney keeps making this argument is that it’s the only card he
can play to claim any sort of moral justification for abandoning
long-standing international norms on torture and the treatment of
detainees. “We did what we had to do” is a better argument than “we did
it because we could.” It also helps fend off darker questions
about whether the Bush administration embarked on a program of
“enhanced interrogation” to manufacture the sort of intelligence it
needed to bolster its broader foreign policy agenda.
Need that on hand when I hear someone say that sadism is a viable tactic in the War On Terror.
I told my readers to "stay tuned for more Saturn Awards coverage" today,
but I didn't say which category. That's because the leading nominees for
Best Hor...
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