Surely it’s not a coincidence that Brennan dropped out the day it was announced that Gates was staying.

If Brennan is radioactive because of torture, I would think that Gates would be for Iran-Contra, not to mention all the other policies he has supported in his tenure as SecDef.

Also it probably would have helped Brennan’s case if he had actually made one. There was nothing preventing him from stating now what his views on “enhanced” interrogation are and have been and how they may have evolved over time.

It is not so hard for me to believe that Brennan felt the same – that other forms of torture were, if not acceptable, then just not as widely and graphically depicted. His opposition to it may well have been due to the word-pictures that this practice conjures. That waterboarding held a special place for the operatives and those that signed off, and that opposing that method alone rendered his conscience somewhat clearer.

This would, of course, presuppose that he was no less the monster than Cheney and the rest, and sought a place that placed him above the rest, for posterity if nothing else.

But I guess what I’d say is that while I’d no longer view Brennan as someone who should play a major role in the intelligence community, I still think we need more evidence before we can say that he’s an ardent supporter of torture.

Um, he took his name out of the hat awfully damn quick, and he did it by writing (as Glenn pointed out) a mealy-mouthed letter about his involvement in all of the rampant law-breaking of the past 8 years. If he isn’t a torture apologist, he could’ve just said so. Instead, he gave us a typical Team Bush obfuscation letter. My reading of his actions is that there’s still a big shoe that’s left to drop regarding this guy, and if it doesn’t have to do with torture, then it’s something equally odious.

It’s not hard to see others within the intelligence community looking at the Brennan case and saying, “Did I oppose this-or-that torture program loudly enough; and if I didn’t, will I have a place in this administration?”

part of ending torture – and keeping it from starting again – is making sure that there is some price to be paid for having gone along with it. i hope for criminal charges – but if that isn’t to be, then at the very least people should have to be asking themselves the question above.

There’s the moral argument, the efficacy argument, and also the “do unto others” argument (which is the one that carries the most weight with the uniformed services: If we don’t follow the Geneva Convention when dealing with our captives, that makes it less likely our foes will when dealing with theirs).

There isn’t room for even a hint of torture being acceptable, or that hint will grow into standard practices way beyond the hint.

Obama: We don’t torture. That says it. No maybe, no sort of, no special circumstances, no ‘borderline’ actions. The monster must have a wood stake driven into the heart and wired in place.

I’m not opposed, I should add, to Damascus Road conversions, but only for those not having future management responsibilities. Top leadership must be pure of heart and pure on prior actions, or they can’t be trusted.