Torture Apologists

There seem to be three main avenues of arguments defending the torture memos yesterday.

1) The Cheney Attack: Obama made us less safe by releasing the memos. That's the line parroted by the Bushies dragged out to play CYA. Everything was legal, but by revealing specific tactics and methods, we have warned terrorists of our techniques and now they can compensate for things like the Deadly Caterpillar Plan. Americans that are killed by terrorists are now all on Obama's head.

This is stupid and inane, as Greg Sargent explains.

The claim is largely bogus. While a few technical torture details in the memos were new, much about the techniques themselves had already been public. Indeed, what’s actually new about the memos is that they reveal in unprecedented detail the Bush administration’s effort to legally justify already-known techniques.

Case in point: Two top former Bush administration officials, CIA director Michael Hayden and Attorney General Michael Mukasey, took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to blast Obama. They argued that public disclosure of the memos might “diminish the effectiveness of these techniques” and makes their suspension permanent, since you wouldn’t ever revive techniques that have “already been disclosed in detail.”

This, the two men warned, means tying the hands of Obama and future presidents in the war against terrorists.

But much about these techniques was already publicly known. For instance, the recently released report from the Red Cross contains detailed descriptions of techniques such as hurling suspects against a wall; face-slapping; confinement in a box; prolonged nudity; sleep deprivation; waterboarding; etc., etc. These were the techniques detailed in yesterday’s memos. This stuff is detailed in other places.

Strike one for the neo-cons.

2) The Sensible Centrist Attack: The entire issue is moot because no crimes were committed. Obama could never prosecute the CIA or Bush, so he's attacking them in the court of public opinion instead. Since nothing illegal was done, there was no reason to release the memos in the first place other than to attack the Bush administration and the CIA in a nasty, partisan manuever.

But that argument too dies a nasty death. Marcy Wheeler points out that the practical upshot is that the CIA's John Rizzo misrepresented what it was doing to the DoJ.

I hate to say it, but the 10 high value detainees, each reporting the same treatment independently, are a lot more credible than Steven Bradbury repeating John Rizzo's empty assurances.

Which suggests that, rather than rebutting "erroneous and inflammatory assumptions," the real concern the release of these memos ought to raise is the misrepresentations CIA apparently made to DOJ. By no means do I mean to excuse John Yoo and Steven Bradbury for their "banality." But John Rizzo was lying. Blatantly. In his claims to OLC as he tried to get stuff approved.

Contrary to Obama's suggestion, these memos should not correct any assumptions we've made about the torture our government conducted in our name. Rather, they should make it crystal clear that John Rizzo lied repeatedly about what the CIA was doing.

So there's a very good chance that crimes indeed were committed and investigation is needed of the people involved. Strike Two.

3) The Lunacy Attack: Obama only released these memos because he wanted to detract from the success of the Tea Party movement. But that's the weakest of the argments. Indeed, the court order to release the information to meet the ACLU's FOIA request had a deadline of April 16. Obama you see was just following the law...he had no choice.

Even so, the officials described the president's process of deciding how much to release in response to the suit as very difficult. Over four weeks, there were intense debates involving the president, Cabinet members, lower-level officials and even former administration officials.

Obama was concerned that releasing the information could endanger ongoing operations, American personnel or U.S. relationships with foreign intelligence services. CIA officials, in particular, needed reassuring, the officials said.

But in the end, the view of the Justice Department prevailed, that the FOIA law required the release and that the government would be forced to do so by the court if it didn't do so itself, the officials said.

Strike Three, wingers.

You're out.