Tenet's New Book:
(a) Administration Lied About War Evidence;
(b) Torture Effective Against KSM et. al.

At the Washington Post.

The upshot(s):

(Supposing, temporarily, that Tenet is right and telling the truth.)

(a) Though Tenet doesn't use 'lie' or its cognates in any of the exerpts, but, of course, that's what we're talking about. We're in the midst of our biggest strategic train wreck ever because we (well, some of us) elected basically the most intellectually dishonest and ideological SOBs on the American political scene. So no news there. Only an intellectual ostrich has any doubts about that by this point.

Put it in the history books. That case is closed.

(b) Torture was used against some people (e.g. KSM), and it worked at least some times. As for the former point, we already know that. ("Enhanced interrogation techniques" = torture, of course; if we're going to do it, we should at least be honest enough to admit it.) As for the latter point--as I've said before--it doesn't really surprise me. I know very little about the subject, but provisionally assume that torture is, in fact, effective in some cases. I've read claims by people in the know that it's not effective because you can get people to say anything if you brutalize them enough; but the important question here is: if you stop short of that, and merely brutalize them a little, can you get important information from them? (Christ, I can't even believe that this is who we are now: a country that has to talk about how severely it should torture people...)

Some who argue that torture is never morally justified hang much of their case on the claim that it doesn't work. A phlosophically more interesting question is: is it still never justified even if it does sometimes work. My position, FWIW: it probably works sometimes, but it is only justified in fairly extreme cases. I'm concerned that the administration sometimes seems downright eager to torture an alarmingly large percentage of the people it can lay its hands on. My position--again, FWIW, which ain't much--is that it should only be even considered in cases that closely approach "ticking time-bomb" cases. I'm not even sure it should be used on KSM. (Though to be honest, I'm not exactly in danger of dehydration from crying about the fact that it was.) I don't know--and you don't know--enough details to make a very accurate judgment there... But we do know enough details to distrust the administration's judgment in such matters. Anyone who doesn't distrust this administration's judgment in almost all matters is, again, playing ostrich.

I'm so sickened by all this that I can barely bring myself to read the papers anymore.