The Soviets understood that these methods were cruel. They were also honest with themselves about the purpose of such cruelty -- to brutalize their enemies and to extract false confessions, rather than truthful intelligence. By denying this, President Bush is not just misleading us. He appears to be deceiving himself.
The author here calls out President Bush for special ridicule, but the absence of outrage is sufficiently widespread that we are apparently reliant on Human Rights Watch to remind us of the consensus reached by our government. I suspect the author is being theatrical when he suggests that Bush is "deceiving himself." Last week I flipped through OpinionJournal and found all sorts of people on the right, trying to argue that the new DoD rules are "soft on terror." It should surprise no one that Human Rights Watch can write a persuasive anti-torture op-ed. However, as is often the case, there is more news in what's not in the papers than in what does appear. And what I don't see right now are op-eds from DNI Negroponte and DCI Hayden and the DDO telling us in no uncertain terms how essential these abusive practices are to their operational success. (Negroponte repeatedly says that the ability to conduct interrogations is essential, even if it is not a daily event, which is why he is pushing for additional "clarity" after the SCOTUS ruling.) If those people were willing to write those op-eds, you can be quite sure that WSJ and others would run them. Instead you find Colin Powell saying that "The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." From the DNI, what you will find is this, on Fox News yesterday: WALLACE: Since the Supreme Court said in June that these interrogations are now covered by the Geneva Conventions, have any CIA officers refused to carry out any interrogations? ... NEGROPONTE: I think the way I would answer you in regard to that question is, that there’s been precious little activity of that kind for a number of months now, and certainly since the Supreme Court decision. WALLACE: That has curtailed the kind of questioning that they have done. NEGROPONTE: There just simply hasn’t been that kind of activity.
If you read between the lines of this interview, it becomes quite clear that the CIA is unwilling to stick its neck out on this any longer, especially now that DoD has come out and publicly abandoned the abusive practices. Actually, you don't even really have to read between the lines; it's pretty clear. Call Cruelty What It Is | 
