Democrats' convenient memory and moral grandstanding.

It's amazing how convenient "The Politics of Liberal Amnesia" is. Democratic leadership, including Nancy Pelosi, were informed of the enhanced interrogation techniques and did not object to their use. Congress continued to fund the CIA in its conduct of interrogations. What did the Democrats think was the purpose of such information except to get their approval for such operations?

Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal article quotes Senator Bob Graham during a hearing in 2002:

"Unfortunately, we are not living in times in which lawyers can say no to
an operation just to play it safe," said Democrat Bob Graham, chairman of the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the 2002 confirmation hearing of
Scott Muller to be the CIA's general counsel. "We need excellent, aggressive
lawyers who give sound, accurate legal advice, not lawyers who say no to an
otherwise legal opinion just because it is easier to put on the brakes."

Of course, that was then, this is now. Now that we seem safely beyond the dangers of new al Qaeda attacks, Democrats now want to prosecute the lawyers for being "excellent, aggressive lawyers who give sound, accurate legal advice" rather than simply saying "no to an otherwise legal opinion just because it is easier to put on the brakes." Funny, those Democrats.

Rather than seeing them as "excellent, aggressive lawyers," Democrats now characterize them as careerists willing to approve anything suggested by the President and Vice President in order to win future appointments to the bench or other career advancement.

Democrats now want to claim that the enhanced interrogation methods were not necessary to gain information from Khalid Sheik Mohammad and that any information obtained did not prevent attacks. The article provides these statements from CIA Director George Tenet:

"I believe none of these successes [in foiling terrorist plots] would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal -- read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted his client simply shut up. In his initial interrogation by CIA officers, KSM was defiant. 'I'll talk to you guys,' he said, 'after I get to New York and see my lawyer.' Apparently he thought he would be immediately shipped to the United States and indicted in the Southern District of New York. Had that happened, I am confident that we would have obtained none of the information he had in his head about imminent threats to the American people."

Mr. Tenet continues: "From our interrogation of KSM and other senior al Qaeda members . . . we learned many things -- not just tactical information leading to the next capture. For example, more than 20 plots had been put in motion by al Qaeda against U.S. infrastructure targets, including communications nodes, nuclear power plants, dams, bridges and tunnels."

The Democrats would now punish Bush and others for taking action other than treating KSM and others as though they were white-collar criminals arrested in an ordinary criminal investigation. Tenet's considered opinion is that the CIA would have obtained no information from him and that the planned subsequent terrorist operations would have occurred with an unknown number of casualties and damage to infrastructure.

From the safety and comfort of 2009 one may easily take the morally superior position that Bush and the CIA "tortured" KSM. Undoubtedly, he experienced discomfort and tremendous fright in some of the enhanced interrogations. Does that equate to torture under the law and in view of the extraordinary protections of medical oversight in all of the interrogations?

Furthermore, as to the lawyers who wrote the legal opinions, was the law so clear that they had to know that their opinions were clearly fallacious and that no reasonable lawyer would approve the proposed enhanced interrogation techniques as not constituting torture? In my view, one can reasonably argue that their opinions are mistaken. I do not think one can read the opinions and conclude that they knew their opinions to be erroneous and that they knowingly approved conduct that they knew to constitute torture.