Over at Greg's place, I poke holes in torture aficionado Marc Thiessen's complaints about General David Petraeus' anti-torture bonifides given his nomination to head the CIA, and the idea that the Obama administration no longer has an interrogation policy:
During a Senate hearing in February, Senator Marco Rubio pressed Panetta on whether or not the CIA needed to employ the torturous interrogation techniques used by the prior administration in order to gather intelligence. Panetta responded: “I think right now, the process that we have in place...it brings together the best resources that we have to get the intelligence we need, and I think it works pretty well.”
So, yes, the Obama administration does have an interrogation policy, and the CIA is involved in crafting and implementing it. Thiessen’s problem is that the policy doesn’t involve enough torture. Whatever other concerns people might have about Petraeus’ move to head the CIA, for those of us who believe torture is both morally reprehensible and entirely counterproductive, Petraeus’ outspoken opposition to torture and his defenses of American values and the rule of law are a feature, not a bug.
Petraeus is a particularly thorny problem for people like Thiessen, who regard being anti-torture as tantamount to pacifism. If torture is so essential to American security, there's no good answer for why someone who has been the steward of two separate American wars would regard it as an anathema. The only rational answer is that torture is neither a particularly effective let alone necessary tool for protecting America from terrorism.
That's not to say it won't return. If there's another large scale terror attack, a possibility Thiessen wrote an entire book salivating over, torture sometimes for some people may end up being the "moderate" position, which is kind of frightening. Glenn Greenwald considers what the Petraeus appointment signifies for the militarization of American foreign policy--it's rather remarkable how little controversy the move has generated, given the issues raised last time a military official was nominated to head the agency.
