The Kerry torture fantasy a cover up of Obama's screw up

CNN:

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However, I and many others believe that the use of torture and indefinite detention have not only tarnished our honor but also diminished our security.

In this global counterinsurgency effort against al Qaeda and its allies, too often our means have undercut our efforts by wasting one of our best weapons: the legitimacy that comes from our moral authority.

Torture plays directly into a central tenet of al Qaeda's recruiting pitch: that everyday Muslims across the world have something to fear from the United States of America.

From Morocco to Malaysia, people regularly hear stories of torture and suicide at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other overseas prisons. The result has been a major blow to our credibility worldwide, particularly where we need it most: in the Muslim world.

Once permitted, torture and lawlessness are not easily contained. Coercive interrogation techniques found their way from high-level terrorists at Guantanamo to low-level detainees at Abu Ghraib.

Years later, images of abuse there remain fixtures across the Arab and Muslim world. And as John McCain has argued, the use of techniques like waterboarding leaves its scars on a democratic society as well.

Torture elicits lies -- not just from those experiencing it, but from those who seek to conceal it. After years of Orwellian denials and legalistic parsing, what a relief it was to hear our new attorney general-designee finally acknowledge what we know to be true: that yes, "waterboarding is torture."

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This is a fantasy vision of interrogation techniques that are not reasonably defined as torture. Do we torture our troops? No. Yet all of the techniques he wants to bar are used in the training of troops including waterboarding.

It also defies logic that people would chose the head choppers who construct real torture rooms and kill everyone who disagrees with their weird religious views because the the discomfort caused a terrorist in trying to save lives. That is sheer nonsense on stilts. One of the reason for the PR problem is people like Kerry have been using this as a political point rather than looking at it rationally.

This moral preening is going to get people Americans killed.