nytimes: The Torture Apologists

[spanone]

The killing of Osama bin Laden provoked a host of reactions from Americans: celebration, triumph, relief, closure and renewed grief. One reaction, however, was both cynical and disturbing: crowing by the apologists and practitioners of torture that Bin Laden’s death vindicated their immoral and illegal behavior after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Jose Rodriguez Jr. was the leader of counterterrorism for the C.I.A. from 2002-2005 when Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other Al Qaeda leaders were captured. He told Time magazine that the recent events show that President Obama should not have banned so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. (Mr. Rodriguez, you may remember, ordered the destruction of interrogation videos.)

John Yoo, the former Bush Justice Department lawyer who twisted the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions into an unrecognizable mess to excuse torture, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the killing of Bin Laden proved that waterboarding and other abuses were proper. Donald Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, said at first that no coerced evidence played a role in tracking down Bin Laden, but by Tuesday he was reciting the talking points about the virtues of prisoner abuse.

There is no final answer to whether any of the prisoners tortured in President George W. Bush’s illegal camps gave up information that eventually proved useful in finding Bin Laden. A detailed account in The Times on Wednesday by Scott Shane and Charlie Savage concluded that torture “played a small role at most” in the years and years of painstaking intelligence and detective work that led a Navy Seals team to Bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/opinion/05thu1.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

[spanone]

1. kick for visibility

[WingDinger]

2. I think the Bush legacy project is backfiring. Specially after the Bush hissyfit.

Wah, Wah, that guy is taking all my well deserved credit.

[crickets]

3. Here's hoping you're right. K&R

[EstimatedProphet]

4. Apologists? No, more like fetishists or addicts.

[gratuitous]

5. If the current administration thought torture was wrong

Don't you think the administration would investigate allegations, develop evidence, and try people who might be guilty? Hand-wringing by the New York Times notwithstanding, torture is the official policy of the United States is concerned, and it is endorsed at the highest levels as a tool of statecraft.

The "crowing" by the apologists and practitioners of torture is superfluous at worst, but it is hardly cynical or disturbing to the current administration.

[pacalo]

6. If torture worked, bin Laden would have been located 7 years ago. That's just common sense.

And it is not who we are as a nation.