Torture is good. Torture makes the torturees say exactly what the torturers tell the torturees they want them to say. So torture produces confessions. Which are admissible in kangaroo courts where the 'interrogation' methods are not admissible, so the courts never have to deny the evidence.

It's called streamlining. It's 'process improvement' pure and simple.

How in the hell else are we going to produce enough self-confessed 'terrists' to justify the War On Thinking, anyway.

Besides, it's fun:Retired Command Sergeant Major Eric Haney: a founding member of Delta Force, the military's elite covert counter-terrorist unit:

The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It's about vengeance, it's about revenge, or it's about cover-up. You don't gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the world knows that. It's worse than small-minded, and look what it does. This administration has been masters of diverting attention away from real issues and debating the silly. Debating what constitutes torture: Mistreatment of helpless people in your power is torture, period. And (I'm saying this as) a man who has been involved in the most pointed of our activities. I know it, and all of my mates know it. You don't do it. It's an act of cowardice. I hear apologists for torture say, "Well, they do it to us." Which is a ludicrous argument. ... The Saddam Husseins of the world are not our teachers. Christ almighty, we wrote a Constitution saying what's legal and what we believed in. Now we're going to throw it away.

I remember most vividly a little old lady from a church in nebraska who, after hearing my dad describe his experiences in Brazilian  "interrogation", asked if this wasn't ok for communists.

How many people have been released from prisons based on dna evidence after having been convicted of a crime because of a confession obtained under... duress? What of the recent stories comming out of Chicago about police interrogation?

Lets not even get started on popular entertainment.

We are at a point now in this country when we have to decide who we are, and who we want to be.

The WaPo reports, today, on the memo.

A previously undisclosed Pentagon report concluded that the three terrorism suspects held at a brig in South Carolina were subjected to months of isolation, and it warned that their "unique" solitary confinement could be viewed as violating U.S. detention standards.

According to a summary of the 2004 report obtained by The Washington Post, interrogators attempted to deprive one detainee, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari citizen and former student in Peoria, Ill., of sleep and religious comfort by taking away his Koran, warm food, mattresses and pillow as part of an interrogation plan approved by the high-level Joint Forces Command.

So, since 2004, Rummy's folks knew there was a problem, and that the problem had been part of a deliberate plan.

Interrogators also prevented the International Committee of the Red Cross from visiting at least one detainee, according to the report, which noted evidence of other unspecified, unauthorized interrogation techniques.

Says the admin:  They're war criminals, but not really, so we won't let the ICRC visit them.  Another violation of Geneva.
Of course, the Admin also refused to follow an ICRC recommendation, that Padilla be allowed a clock.

The report by the Navy's inspector general was presented to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in May 2004 and was declassified in 2005. It was the first to raise the question of mistreatment of alleged enemy combatants inside the United States.

Its details about conditions at the Navy brig in 2004 could prove critical to the fate of two of the "enemy combatant" detainees who spent years in the prison: Marri, the only one of the three who remains there and is facing the prospect of a special military trial, and Jose Padilla, a Brooklyn-born U.S. citizen now facing criminal charges in Miami.

Attorneys for Padilla have argued in recent court filings that any abusive interrogation methods used on their client may mean that his statements to government agents were coerced and, therefore, inadmissible in his trial. He is accused of engaging in a conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens and provide material support to terrorists abroad.

The attorneys told a federal judge in Florida yesterday that they have a right to learn about those interrogation methods, and they recently sought to subpoena Brig. Gen. Daryl D. Thiessen, the deputy inspector general who made the findings after inspecting the brig, and other senior military officers who worked at the prison. The attorneys said Padilla spent 1,307 days in a 9-by-7-foot cell in an isolated unit, was often chained to the ground for hours by his wrists and torso, and was kept awake at night by guards using bright lights and loud noises.

Prosecutors asked the judge to quash the subpoenas, arguing that Padilla's attorneys are making "meritless" and "sensationalist" claims to turn the court's attention away from his alleged misconduct. In previous filings, the government decried the "absurdity of Padilla's assertion" that he was abused, noting that the government was "conscientious enough to tend to his toothache."

So, let me get this straight.  While the allegations are, apparently, true - there was an interrogation plan approved at high levels and the plan included the treatment at issue - and the plan (and the way it was carried out) were the subject of both investigation and the conclusion that the plan and execution were arguably illegal, the same facts and arguments based on them are also "meritless" and "sensationalist".

Riiiiiiiiiight.