"we lost the torture debate completely"

[bigtree]

19. Thiessen says the investigation was "six sordid years of Democratic demagoguery and investigations"

... and there's 'agreement' here with him on this?

This is an attempt to close the book on the process of accountability when the summary report should serve as the beginning of assigning responsibility and initiating prosecutions for violations of the law.

Is it any surprise that this summary, with the redactions engineered and overseen by the very architects of the torture program - including Tenet protege, CIA chief Brennan - failed on its own to convince the public on all of the points polled? That was the intention of the cover-up; that's the effect.

Does anyone here remember the public reaction after the publishing of the Abu-Ghraib torture photos? That's the kind of impact that's needed and it won't come from a doctored summary. It will take a determined effort by a prosecution-based commission or tribunal which details to the public exactly what occurred, what laws were broken, and who's responsible.

Newsweek:

The nightmarish images from Abu Ghraib are still seared into the American consciousness: piles of naked bodies, detainees being led on leashes and U.S. soldiers giving a thumbs-up as it all happens. But now, a decade after they were made public, the U.S. government is trying to conceal as many as 2,100 additional photographs that are said to be even more disturbing.

A federal judge ruled in August that the Obama administration had to decide by October 21 whether it would release the images showing U.S. military personnel torturing detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq or defend its case, photograph by photograph, in order to continue withholding them. The administration said Tuesday that it intended to defend keeping the images secret and would supplement the record with its reasons.

Alternet:

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq...Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the U.S. President's attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published

We can begin that process of accountability and informing the public about the true nature and effect of the tortures by releasing those photos which are being withheld; withheld by playing on hyped-up fears of some kind of blowback - obviously the same type of hype that preceded the release of this edited summary was pure bull.

Quit relying on critics of accountability and defenders of tortures to tell us what impact the disclosures have had, or should have. For those responding in this amazingly co-opting thread, read Thiessen's article, and then come back and tell me how much you agree with him. We need to use that public polling as an incentive to accelerate our informing and advocacy, not shrink away in despair, like Thiessen intends us to with his mocking, torture-defending efforts.