an insidious republican meme

Amid all the news about President Obama's decision to release the infamous torture memos is the insidious idea being bruited about by Dick Cheney and other Republican supporters of torture (although they prefer to call it something else). The latest is South Dakota GOP Senator John Thune, who criticized the Obama Administration, saying "They would be well served not to depart abruptly from the policies that have kept us safe the last seven years."

See, they're setting things up so that if some sort of big terrorist attack does happen, they can say it was because Democrats were soft on terrorists.

Never mind that most of the info gleaned from high-value captured terrorist types like Abu Zubaida was obtained BEFORE the "enhanced interrogation techniques" began.

Never mind the observation of knowledgeable types that torture and coercion "usually decreases the reliability of the information because the person will say whatever he believes will stop the pain."

Never mind that even the Israelis, with legitimate security/terrorism concerns and a no-nonsense attitude, concede that torture does NOT gain reliable information AND damages the torturers.

Obama HAS made the right call. And I'm sympathetic to NOT prosecuting working-level interrogators as long as they followed what was at the time the legal policy.

Go after the policymakers and go after the lawyers who perverted their professional morals to ofter after-the-fact justification for what the de facto Bush (and Cheney) Administration had already decided to do.