Torture

The torture story is unfolding pretty quickly. the liberal blogosphere is really doing an outstanding job of putting the pieces together as well as advocating for investigation. For the most part, the best I can do is link to some of the better analysis (as well as old fashioned news reporting) from time to time.

I suggest starting with this from Daily Kos:

So much information about the Bush administration's torture policies and rationales has surfaced in recent days that, contrary to the secrecy meme of those days, we are now in danger of suffering from TMI - too much information.

So I thought it would be helpful to put together a timeline of known facts, reports and claims to try to give some chronological perspective to it all. As with any such collection, the selections are somewhat subjective, but I have tried to be fair (but not balanced; this isn't a sporting event) in including what is known, admitted or reasonably validated. And - for once - I will leave speculation to the comments.

Digby

All day I've been seeing torture apologists all over TV frantically trying to block this particular line of inquiry. They know that it's potentially the most explosive revelation of all. If the White House ordered torture to try to get the prisoners to falsely confess to links between al Qaeda and Iraq ... well all bets are off.

Marcy Wheeler

Whether you believe Obama is impeding investigation or playing 11 dimension chess to set it up without looking like the bad guy, his policy on FOIA has already begun to open up the floodgates that may enable public opinion make this happen.

Marcy Again

But, as we know, that's not how waterboarding was done in practice.

The IG Report noted that in some cases the waterboard was used with far greater frequency than initially indicated, see IG Report at 5, 44, 46, 103-04, and also that it was used in a different manner. See id. at 37 ("[T]he waterboard technique ... was different from the technique described in the DoJ opinion and used in the SERE training. The difference was the manner in which the detainee's breathing was obstructed. At the SERE school and in the DoJ opinion, the subject's airflow is disrupted by the firm application of a damp cloth over the air passages; the interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth in a controlled manner. By contrast, the Agency Interrogator ... applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee's mouth and nose. One of the psychologists/interrogators acknowledged that the Agency's use of the technique is different from that used in SERE training because it is "for real--and is more poignant and convincing.") [my emphasis]

They got approval for SERE techniques. But they had already formally decided to far exceed the guidelines used in SERE.

Greg Sargent

Robert Mueller, who was appointed by Bush in 2001 and remains FBI director under Obama, delivered that assessment at the end of this December 2008 article in Vanity Fair on torture:

I ask Mueller: So far as he is aware, have any attacks on America been disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through what the administration still calls “enhanced techniques”?

“I’m really reluctant to answer that,” Mueller says. He pauses, looks at an aide, and then says quietly, declining to elaborate: “I don’t believe that has been the case.”

That stands in direct contrast to Dick Cheney’s recent claim that torture has been “enormously valuable” in terms of “preventing another mass-casualty attack against the United States.”

You’d think that this sort of thing would throw a bit of a wrench into the Bushies’ campaign. But as Charles Kaiser notes, these types of statements haven’t really broken through the media din.

And finally from the Washington Post:

But several top Republicans, including Senator John McCain of Arizona, are pushing back. A day after they sent a letter to Obama arguing that any investigation criminalizes political differences on national security, McCain and several colleagues applied more pressure on the White House through a round of interviews on TV news programs.

(emphasis added)
You have got to be kidding me. First off, what does "criminalizing policy differences" even mean? It sounds to me like they're saying that American and international law is just an opinion to be considered and discarded at will. I think there's a real chance that McCain would have been a worse president than Bush. Of all people, I would have expected him to have moral clarity on torture...