The techniques used by high-level US operators should never have been revealed in such detail.

The next time some tin-pot despot wants legal justification to dissolve a legislature, execute a purge or invade another country he need reach no further than these declassified documents.

They'll give him all the spurious logic, over-arching rationalizations or brazenly self-serving assumptions he'll ever need when justifying it to whatever he's left of the press or courts.

This is monstrous.

"I just think it's far more important to go after the people who enabled these policies"

The only way to "go after" the top people is to indict the bottom people. Then you offer them plea bargains in exchange for cooperation. That's how you get the testimony you need to have about what actually went on in those windowless rooms, and what the higher-ups were told, and what they said. If you don't have the live testimony about what it was like to smash a man's head into a wall, to soak him in freezing water, to lock him in a coffin - if you don't have that, you don't have a case.

First the little fish, then the big fish. That's how prosecutions work. This business about how we need to let the torturers go in order to catch the people in charge is complete idiocy.

Oh, V.O.R. What on earth are you talking about? The fact that CIA agents tortured people is going to be used to justify a dictator's decision to invade a neighbor? On what planet will that happen? And anyway, all the details of the torture methods(except the bug, I think) were published in the New York Review of Books several weeks ago. So the memos don't reveal any new "techniques."

PS- You gotta love that word, techniques. It's so technical.

@ V.O.R

"Monstrous" is betraying everything that made this country different, and better and great, by authorizing plainly illegal and immoral activities by government officers, all to serve the agenda of our very own tin-pot despots, George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Your argument is false because it is circular. Never expose and prosecute crimes? If you really believe that the goal is to prevent dictators to point to us as an example that subverting the law and violating civil rights is OK, the simplest thing to do is to NOT DO THOSE THINGS. The second simplest is to prosecute those who authorized those things, so the clear message is that despots go to jail.

Yours is the only solution that would enable the despots to point to us as an example that proves that violating human rights and subverting the rule of law works.

hey, where's douggie feith and the special office of special plans in all this.
"the most devastating intelligence failures of the past ten years, 9/11, the war in Iraq,"
can we see that gibberish unclassified????

Agree with Bloix. Pragmatically, going after the small fry a) makes it easier to later go after the big fish, b) even if you never get the big fish, you've still made it harder for them to order torture in the future if all the underlings are afraid of being sent to jail. Nor is it clear that there are any especially finite resources that would be exhausted if we went after the underlings; who says we have to choose? The burden of proof is on those who say we do. Finally, as a matter of principle, those who just followed orders are guilty of seriously bad and unlawful activities, and deserve punishment, irrespective of who else also deserves punishment. When an organization engages in torture, everyone who does it, top to bottom, deserves to pay for their crimes.

"The next time some tin-pot despot wants legal justification to dissolve a legislature, execute a purge or invade another country he need reach no further than these declassified documents."

So, torture is only torture if its done by tin-pot despots, but not by well-meaning Americans.

Another definition of 'American exceptionalism'?

"I just think it's far more important to go after the people who enabled these policies". This is fast becoming CW on the left and I find it just nuts. It takes a special kind of monster to torture another person. Those are the ones we first need to eliminate. Enablers are a dime a dozen.

Okay so you are probably right that going after the little guys isn't the right target, but it still doesn't mean they should go scott free. they did commit the atrocities. everyone involved from the top down should be held accountable.

justin @ San Diego Wedding Photographer

Ultimately, these people are now a threat to our way of life. We can't let them come home and become teachers, police officers, or government officials. If we do, then they will start to use the things they've learned against their own people, against our children.

It is unavoidable, once you walk down a road like that there isn't any walking back.