One thing that I'm sure many here have already figured out (I think I'm quite late to this realization), is that the core group of terror enablers in the Bush administration weren't primarily concerned that Americans would get killed in another mass attack. Their real nightmare was that America would get attacked and they would be blamed. They knew the tactics were unlikely to give them any info they couldn't get (more efficiently) in other ways. They knew they were breaking the law. The reason they did it was because they were convinced another attack would happen on their watch and they needed something extraordinary, unprecedented, to show they tried to prevent it.
My reasoning below.
The main thrusts of the pushback against releasing the torture memos seem to be:
A. Gives the enemy our playbook
The main pushback against classifying the techniques as torture seems to be something along the lines of :
B. It's not torture; it's close, but not torture (or as Shep says, "I don't know if it is or not! But we don't do it!")
Let's look at A first. Frankly, there's no reason to even bring this up unless you were positioning yourself for a finger-pointing exercise for a subsequent attack. The information was public that the US used these techniques. Schoolkids in Latvia knew it, hairdressers in Tierra del Fuego knew it (well, I imagine one did). The 'new' information that the upper echelons of the White House planned it, approved it, and wrote up all kinds of justifications for it really doesn't add to the primary bit of info that it happened--it just defines the way it was organized.
Terrorists who now know that they won't be waterboarded will not be more likely to make plans, or carry them out with the release of the memos and the Obama administration taking these techniques off the table. The only logical extension of them knowing they won't be tortured is that they might be sloppier and get themselves picked up more easily (as in, "Hell, why am I in this fucking cave? The US and Obama clearly doesn't care anymore about catching me, and if they do, they won't even play loud music at me and show me lovely white breasts. I'm going to Karachi, baby!").
So clearly the right is playing that melody only to position themselves for an eventual terror incident, after which they'll be on teevee talking about how they told Obama this would happen, go look at the tape. "Alkayda got our dadgum playbook, and look what happened!" Their premise is unprovable, except after the fact.
So on to B.
Most of us remember what the air was like after 9/11--some literally, but I'm speaking figuratively. People were scared, the next attack was not only guaranteed, it was imminent. The spinmeisters in the White House had other, unique problems, though. Their outfit had let it happen. They had to push back not only to make that simple fact a statement of blasphemy (Fleischer still says 'How dare you" to this day if someone goes near that), but to make sure nobody could say it about the next, inevitable, attack.
They weren't afraid they were going to die, as I was, riding the subway--they had armored cars and a bunker within walking distance. They weren't afraid others would die (they might be concerned, but that's not fear). They were, however, AFRAID that blame would be coming down on them not only for the previous attack, but for the next one.
How then can you push back--politically--against an attack that hasn't happened yet? In other words, how can you create the political environment that will let your administration survive an attack on our soil? You can't rely merely on doing a bang-up job with military intelligence--most of it will happen in secret under the best scenarios--you couldn't reveal those facts even if they make your poo smell like roses. Plus, people expect that as a minimum.
What you can do is show that you went the extra mile, that you were punitive, that you thought of everything, and that you considered American lives (putting aside military and contractor lives) worth anything to protect, even above the Constitution (that fucking suicide pact). Doesn't matter that the methods really didn't work, that wasn't the point. Doesn't matter that we really frown upon that kind of thing in this county, either. The attacks were 'unprecedented', and you can make that lemon into lemonade.
So you figure out how far you can go, short of shit that would be in the basement of Madame Tussaud's (when I was a kid they had a dungeon down there). After the inevitable attack, you figure out how to leak what you did, and you figure out how to spin it. AND, most importantly, you make it seem reasonable. Even though it didn't work, look what we did. We were doing everything we could. Al Gore wouldn't have done that, and we'd have umpteen million more attacks like it, instead of just this one.
The strategy only makes sense if you truly believe there will be another attack and you'll be in political damage control mode. Because, if there isn't, and word gets out about this, you are fucked.
There wasn't another attack, they are in spin mode, and they are fucked. The only thing that can keep these assholes from becoming the urinal rings of history is another attack. And they are ready for it, at least with their mouths.