Spencer Ackerman has a great idea:
I don't pretend that anything will produce an end to this new debate over torture. The fact that we're debating torture diminishes our standing as a civilization. But moving beyond it: perhaps, after the actionable intelligence is drained from the bin Laden documents, it would be useful to reconvene the 9/11 Commission and have them review the ten-year hunt for bin Laden. It's not helpful for something that looked like a failure on May 1 to be retconned into an inevitable, inexorable success on May 2. The tale of the bin Laden hunt -- and the lessons to learn from it -- is the logical final chapter of the commission's 2004 report. And the gravitas of the 9/11 Commission, delivered through a public report, would create the closest thing possible to a narrative that can stand proudly before history.
Marcy Wheeler adds:
In addition to assessing whether torture, skilled interrogation by al Qaeda experts, or something else worked, the Commission could also review whether dragnet illegal wiretapping or targeted, legal wiretapping worked better; whether human missions or drones did; whether ground wars or smaller responses worked better (particularly when the ground war had nothing to do with terrorism). The Commission could develop a sense of where our counterterrorist investments paid off, and what served primarily to enrich contractors. Whether it makes sense to feel up cancer survivors at TSA gates, or whether the human screening already in place works better.
I'm going to add something else to this--a new 9/11 Commission should reassess the scope and purpose of the fight against terrorism, and try to define what victory should look like--before Congress passes a new authorization to use military force. It should also focus on the covert war being waged by special operations forces, and bringing those operations under congressional oversight just like the CIA. This is the time to reassess what the U.S. should do and how it wants to do it, not simply carry on as though nothing significant had happened.
