Well, it looks like the White House and the Senate Intelligence Committee are going down the dark road of trying to determine the efficacy of the Bush administration's tortuous interrogation policy according to Sunday's LA Times. Within the article entitled, "CIA reportedly declined to closely evaluate harsh interrogations: Current and former U.S. officials say the failure to carefully examine the value of 'enhanced' methods like waterboarding -- despite calls to do so as early as 2003 -- was part of a broader trend." there is the news of a new investigation trying to determine whether these torture methods worked and how much actionable intelligence was gained by these methods:
http://www.latimes.com/...
As part of an executive order shutting down the CIA's secret prisons, the White House has set up a task force to examine the effectiveness of various interrogation approaches.
The Senate Intelligence Committee launched a similar review, and began combing through classified CIA cables that describe daily developments in the agency's interrogations of Al Qaeda prisoners.
"To the best of our knowledge, such a review has not been done before," said a Senate aide involved in the probe.
I guess the administration and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee want to take Dick Cheney directly on when it comes to whether torture led to actionable intelligence. Not sure I like where this investigation may lead. Will the American public say that torture is ok and even justified if it lead to a scintilla of intelligence.
I thought that this quote from the article was also interesting too:
U.S. intelligence official who defended CIA interrogation practices said that "productivity was an obvious and important measure of the program's effectiveness. The techniques themselves were not designed to elicit specific pieces of information, but to condition hardened terrorists to answer questions about Al Qaeda's plans and intentions.
"By that yardstick -- the generation of reporting that was true and useful, that led even to other captures -- it worked."
Noteworthy quote. Torture wasn't designed to get information but to get detainees to answer questions? Okay....
As a sidenote, the Washington Post has a poll asking what respondents thought of President Obama's release of the torture memos:
Barely more than half of all poll respondents back Obama's April 16 decision to release the memos specifying how and when to employ specific interrogation techniques. A third "strongly oppose" that decision, about as many as are solidly behind it. Three-quarters of Democrats said they approve of the action, while 74 percent of Republicans are opposed; independents split 50 to 46 percent in favor of the decision.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Take that what you will!! It's good that we have a majority of independents with us at this point. I'd like to see the numbers for strongly support this decision go up though. Hopefully, with the release of more documents, perhaps the issue will move further our way....