Cheney's Still A Hero

|
Bless him, he points out it ain't sportin' to release CIA memos on "torture" w/o telling what we learned from the measures. Yes indeed, if we're going to be transparent and make judgment for history, it would be nice to know the full facts.
One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort. And there are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally asked that they be declassified now. I haven't announced this up until now, I haven't talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I say that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country.
More from Michael Hayden. If we're going to have this conversation, let's be honest.

Most of the people who opposed these techniques want to be able to say, I don't want my nation doing this — which is a purely honorable position — and they didn't work anyway.

That back half of the sentence isn't true. The facts of the case are that the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work.

The president's speech, President Bush, in September of '06 outlined how one detainee led to another led to another with the use of these techniques.

The honorable position you have to take, if you want us not to do this — and believe me, if the nation says don't do it, the CIA won't do it — the honorable position has to be even though these techniques worked, I don't want you to do that. That takes courage. The other sentence doesn't.