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TAP Ace Adam Serwer has been moving the ball forward on the torture memo story -- here's his latest piece on how the techniques were used -- but I wanted to step in with a comment on this truly tendentious op-ed by Mike Hayden and Michael Mukasey, the last CIA director and attorney general, respectively, under President Bush:
Disclosure of the techniques is likely to be met by faux outrage, and is perfectly packaged for media consumption. It will also incur the utter contempt of our enemies. Somehow, it seems unlikely that the people who beheaded Nicholas Berg and Daniel Pearl, and have tortured and slain other American captives, are likely to be shamed into giving up violence by the news that the U.S. will no longer interrupt the sleep cycle of captured terrorists even to help elicit intelligence that could save the lives of its citizens.
Let's take it blow-by-blow.
- "Faux outrage" -- it boggles the mind that these men honestly think people are faking anger over U.S. policy to deploy techniques developed by the K.G.B., among other authoritarian organs that are supposed to represent the antithesis of the American project.
- "The utter contempt of our enemies" -- perhaps they were under the impression that our enemies thought we were great until these memos were released; if they are somehow more disdainful of the U.S. now that we're returning to our founding principles, that's kind of the point. The whole 'they hate our freedom' argument propounded by the Bush administration and its allies was dumb and inaccurate, but if you're going to make it, you should probably try to preserve those freedoms.
- "Help elicit intelligence" -- Moral objections aside, research has shown again and again that torture doesn't work.
Despite its mixed record on civil liberties issues thus far, the administration, and the rest of the country, are trying to align national policy with our national ideals, but some people just can't let go.
-- Tim Fernholz
