Ethics

The Cheney Torture Memos

By Ed Brayton

My colleague Spencer Ackerman at the Washington Independent got his hands on those memos that Dick Cheney claims will vindicate the use of torture. Turns out....not so much.

Strikingly, they provide little evidence for Cheney's claims that the "enhanced interrogation" program run by the CIA provided valuable information. In fact, throughout both documents, many passages -- though several are incomplete and circumstantial, actually suggest the opposite of Cheney's contention: that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information the documents cite in defending the value of the CIA's interrogations.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on August 25, 2009 (boomark / email).