Why We Need to Know

There is more than just curiosity at the heart of the need to know what tactics were used by the CIA, military, and private contractors when interrogating detainees in the Bush "war on terror." I don't like to go to the efficacy argument, because what makes Dick Cheney so desperate and offensive is his glib dismissal of American ideals in favor of pragmatism. And according to the military unit charged with SERE, the interrogation program favored by Bush-Cheney, well, it doesn't work anyway.

So if it isn't curiosity, why are there so many people so insistent that we learn what was done in the name of protecting the American people from future attacks?

America has tortured before, that we know from survivors of the right wing dictators of Latin America. But what makes this so different is that the orders to torture came directly from the White House, where Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Rice, Addington, Rumsfeld and more involved the Office of Legal Counsel, subverting its role, to justify their decisions. (Somehow when they were in power, everything was secret, and any leakage was treason, now Cheney suddenly wants everything released.)

Propublica.org is a privately funded investigative journalism site where reporters have been partnering with NPR and The New York Times to bring some light to issues like TARP, the "war on terror," and the economic crisis. Read the comparison between the SERE guidelines, authorized by the various torture memos and the recounts collected by the RED Cross in interviews with former detainees.

Congressional hearings will be a distraction, but not a grand jury and criminal trials.