October 20, 2009 PBS News Hour

The tenure of Berkeley law professor John Yoo has come under fire amid a backlash over the role he played in the Bush administration, advising on the legalities of now-controversial interrogation tactics used on terror suspects. Spencer Michels reports.

SPENCER MICHELS: Since the beginning of the school year, protesters dressed as prisoners or detainees have dogged law professor John Yoo at the University of California at Berkeley. They want the university to fire him for advising the Bush administration, as an attorney in the Justice Department, that it could legally torture suspected terrorists to get information.

PROTESTER: This is a not just a question of academic opinions. This is a question of war crimes. People like John Yoo, these people should be fired.

SPENCER MICHELS: Forty-two-year-old John Yoo has taught here since 1993, except for 2001 to 2003, when he worked for the Justice Department in the Office of Legal Counsel.

During those years, after 9/11, the U.S. was interrogating prisoners, suspected terrorists, at places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Yoo wrote several memos on how far the interrogators could go in pressuring prisoners to reveal information. Those memos argued that techniques such as water- boarding, sleep deprivation, and exploiting a detainee's fear of insects were, in fact, legal.

Yoo's actions have reverberated throughout Boalt Hall, the Berkeley law school where Yoo teaches. Students and faculty are debating the bounds of academic freedom, and whether a professor should be held responsible for controversial work done outside the university.

DAVID ARABELLA, law student: I believe that he does have a right to teach here, because people can have controversial views. But, personally, I'm not going to enroll in his class.

SPENCER MICHELS: The law school dean, Christopher Edley, who has served in several Democratic administrations, has been besieged by messages, the majority against Professor Yoo.

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So many of the saner people were driven out of the military during the Bush administration, it doesn't surprise me that the people left include a lot of the right-wing, racist fringe elements. Still, it's shocking to hear this:

DURHAM — The U.S. military is not just fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s most renowned investigative journalist says.

The army is also “in a war against the White House — and they feel they have Obama boxed in,” Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh told several hundred people in Duke University’s Page Auditorium on Tuesday night. “They think he’s weak and the wrong color. Yes, there’s racism in the Pentagon. We may not like to think that, but it’s true and we all know it.”

In a speech on Obama’s foreign policy, Hersh, who uncovered the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War and torture at Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraqi war, said many military leaders want Obama to fail.

“A lot of people in the Pentagon would like to see him get into trouble,” he said. By leaking information that the commanding officer in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, says the war would be lost without an additional 40,000 American troops, top brass have put Obama in a no-win situation, Hersh contended.
“If he gives them the extra troops they’re asking for, he loses politically,” Hersh said. “And if he doesn’t give them the troops, he also loses politically.”

The journalist criticized the president for “letting the military do that,” and suggested the only way out was for Obama to stand up to them.
“He’s either going to let the Pentagon run him or he has to run the Pentagon,” Hersh said. If he doesn’t, “this stuff is going to be the ruin of his presidency.”

Hersh called the “Af-Pak” situation — the spreading conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan — Obama’s main challenge.

The only way for the U.S. to extricate itself from the conflict, Hersh said, is to negotiate with the Taliban.

“It’s the only way out,” he said. “I know that there’s a lot of discussion in the White House about this now.

[Editor's note: Please welcome D-Day to the Crooks and Liars team. Most of you are no doubt familiar with him through his always-impressive work at Digby's Hullabaloo, where he'll continue to contribute; you'll just get to read more of him here. D-Day also helped fill in a few weeks back while I was on vacation. John's trying to swim against the tide of blogs pulling, so he's hired D-Day to write several posts a week for us. We're lucky to have him. -- DN]

Keith Olbermann talks with Jane Mayer in this clip about the release of the CIA IG report and the preliminary investigation into some of the worst practices of the torture regime. She talks about how the IG report reads like "a crime scene," foregrounding the idea that the architects of the policy at CIA were warned in this 2004 report and repeatedly thereafter that their agency would be in deep legal trouble for continuing these actions, and yet they kept justifying them and/or actually engaging in them for years afterward. Nobody took the warnings seriously, knowing both the makeup of the Justice Department and the Presidency at that time, and perhaps banking on how Washington would view these efforts, as part of the past and best kept their, given the Establishment culpability for torture.

Here's just a few of the facts of what CIA interrogators did in our name, just the ones that come from this IG report, as masterfully summarized by Glenn Greenwald:

• Threats of execution, using semi-automatic handguns and power drills
• Threats to kill detainee and his children
• Threats to rape detainee's wife and children in front of him
• Restricting the detainee's carotid artery
• Hitting detainee with the butt end of a rifle
• Blowing smoke in detainee's face for five minutes
• Multiple instances of waterboarding detainees, of the type we prosecuted Japanese war criminals for using:
• Hanging detainee by their arms until interrogators thought their shoulders might be dislocated
• stepping on detainee's ankle shackles to cause severe bruising and pain
• choking detainee until they pass out
• dousing detainee with water on cold concrete floors in cold temperatures to induce hypothermia
• killing detainees through torture techniques, whether accidental or not
• putting detainee in a diaper for days at a time to live in their own filth

On that last point, Digby notes that this could have been used in tandem with another technique we know about, the use of forced enemas, a particularly degrading technique, part and parcel of the humiliations heaped on prisoners that were psycho-sexual in nature. A lot of these stem from misreadings of books like Raphael Patai's "The Arab Mind," which presumed a host of dubious generalizations about Muslims and their predispositions, all of it willingly lapped up by neoconservatives willing to believe that their opponents were somehow subhuman. As if anyone would react favorably to being made to live in their own shit. These stereotypical projections that manifested themselves in essentially an allowance for torturing brown-skinned people have dangerous and deadly repercussions.

more...

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I'd love to tell you that I'm so erudite and cosmopolitan that I eagerly gobble up The New Yorker cover to cover every month. But it would be a lie. The honest truth is that I read The New Yorker occasionally when articles come up through keyword searches for research for the site and when other bloggers I respect recommend an article.

But this article on Leon Panetta at the CIA was sent to me by one of my Iranian friends (living abroad) who has been filling my inbox with reports of protests and the rumors flying around Tehran. This article has filled her with dread of American interference in Iran.

In fairness, it's a reasonably balanced article; it fairly states the delicate balance that Panetta must tread between the all-too-often opposing forces in the Agency and the Executive Branch. But this section, buried deep on page 6 of the 8 page article, hit me (like my friend) right in the gut:

No criminal charges have ever been brought against any C.I.A. officer involved in the torture program, despite the fact that at least three prisoners interrogated by agency personnel died as the result of mistreatment. In the first case, an unnamed detainee under C.I.A. supervision in Afghanistan froze to death after having been chained, naked, to a concrete floor overnight. The body was buried in an unmarked grave. In the second case, an Iraqi prisoner named Manadel al-Jamadi died on November 4, 2003, while being interrogated by the C.I.A. at Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad. A forensic examiner found that he had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs. Military pathologists classified the case a homicide. A third prisoner died after an interrogation in which a C.I.A. officer participated, though the officer evidently did not cause the death. (Several other detainees have disappeared and remain unaccounted for, according to Human Rights Watch.)

During his tenure at the C.I.A., John Helgerson, the former inspector general, forwarded the crucifixion case, along with an estimated half-dozen other incidents, to the Justice Department, for possible prosecution. But the case files have languished. An official familiar with the cases told me that the agency has deflected inquiries by the Senate Intelligence Committee seeking information about any internal disciplinary action. (Helgerson told me, “Some individuals have been disciplined. And others no longer work at the agency.”)

Panetta acknowledges that there are some people still at the C.I.A. who may be tainted by the torture program. Nevertheless, he says, “I really respect the people who say we shouldn’t have gotten involved in the interrogation business but we had to do our jobs. I don’t think I should penalize people who were doing their duty. If you have a President who exercises bad judgment, the C.I.A. pays the price.”

Excuse me? We're literally crucifying detainees (who have not had the right to even know what they're charged with, much less any other legal right) and there's been NO accountability, NO investigation and Panetta's worried about the CIA paying the price?

Methinks they have the wrong priorities.

June 11, 2009 C-SPAN

The Republicans are so devoid of leadership that they couldn't even offer up a sitting elected member of their party to go on Meet the Press, so they chose disgraced ex-House Leader Newt Gingrich to debate Sen. Dick Durbin on issues of what they consider national security.

David Gregory should look at his ratings one of these days. Gingrich is a washed up gasbag that FOX News has been using for years to smear the Democratic Party. I know he's a good smear merchant; he's quite the professional, but why is he on MTP in the middle of this discussion? Where is an active member of the GOP? I guess Limbaugh was too busy to come on today and represent like a good homey.

SEN. DURBIN: Just remember that President Bush called for the closing of Guantanamo; President Obama did the same, as did Senator McCain in the last campaign. And I also want to remind the former speaker that Major Matthew Alexander, who has actually interrogated al-Qaeda suspects in Iraq, attributes half of the deaths of Americans in Iraq to the detention abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Continuing Guantanamo, unfortunately, makes our troops less safe. The bottom line as I see it is Guantanamo should close in an orderly way. President Obama announced that last Thursday. We understand that at the end of the day there will be some of these people, I don't know the exact number, who will be too dangerous to be released, and President Obama said he would work with Congress and the courts to detain them in a humane, constitutional and legal way.

Gingrich immediately smears the military by saying that Durbin can always find a single troop member from the 550K that served in Iraq that would agree with your point of view.

REP. GINGRICH: Let me say, first of all, there were over 550,000 troops who served in Iraq. I'm sure you can find one to agree with you.

Does Gingrich believe that 550K troops were interrogating prisoners? Maj. Alexander is uniquely qualified to speak on such matters since, but Newt effortlessly smears him and then uses 9/11 to fudge the facts. After 9/11, we invaded Iraq which created thousands of more terrorists. There is no debate about this and the horrors at Gitmo and Abu-Ghraib fueled the fire and Gingrich knows it too.

Gregory had to ask Durbin for proof that Gitmo and Abu-Ghraib created more terrorists than ever before. Where has he been these last eight years? Curious that he didn't ask Cheney for proof for his assertions. Durbin has to reiterate the same point twice.

via MTP transcript:

MR. GREGORY: How long should Gitmo remain open?

REP. GINGRICH: Until the war is over.

MR. GREGORY: When is that?

REP. GINGRICH: We'll--when the terrorists disappear. I mean, you're faced with...

MR. GREGORY: Well, you're talking about a pretty long-term proposition here.

Gingrich wants these dungeons left open until the end of the war, my God.

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As former Vice President Dick Cheney continues his feckless crusade to save his legacy and once again mislead the world about the war crimes he was party to, new revelations about those crimes are beginning to surface.

Denying that White House policy was directly responsible for the vile abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib has been the central goal of a five-year disinformation campaign by Bush officials. 'Torture Team' author Philippe Sands argues that newly-disclosed records show how blatantly Bush officials were willing to lie in order to lead reporters away from the truth. Eighth in a series of articles calling attention to the things we still need to know about torture and other abuses committed by the Bush administration after 9/11.

Soon after the photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib went public, Bush administration officials contrived a high-stakes disinformation campaign to prevent the American people from linking the White House to the vile, sadistic treatment of detainees in that Iraqi prison. They repeatedly insisted that the abuses were just the work of a few “bad apples.” They scoffed at the notion that their orders circumventing historic limits on interrogation were remotely responsible.

Five years later, they’re still at it, with former vice president Dick Cheney waging a clever campaign that would have the debate over government-sanctioned torture turn on what techniques were employed at the CIA’s secret prison -- and whether they “worked.”...

But “Torture Team” author Philippe Sands points out that a vivid illustration of the disinformation campaign – showing just how far officials were willing to mislead and lie in their desperate attempt to avoid culpability for Abu Ghraib – can now be found by comparing one of the newly-released Justice Department memos with statements made by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales in June 2004. Read on...

(Sorry for the missing link!)

Mark Danner on AC360 calls out the Cheney father-daughter tag team for their use of fear mongering and Karl Rove style "ruthless politics of national security". As he notes it isn't good for the country or for the Republican party, not that the Cheney's seem so care.

Mark also points out the very slippery slope that President Obama is talking about taking us down with this idea of prolonged detention which is essentially preventive detention and is not something anyone should be supportive of.

COOPER: Mark, you have written extensively about the detainee issue, about these interrogation techniques. What did you think of what Vice President Cheney said today, about what Liz Cheney said tonight?

DANNER: Well, I think this is an extension of what President Obama has referred to as the politics of fear.

Both Cheneys made very serious charges about President Obama, basically saying, explicitly, that he was endangering the country, that he endangered the country, as -- as Liz Cheney said, by putting out these memos, which is a complete canard.

These techniques have been public not simply since the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge, as -- as you pointed out, Anderson, but since 2005, when ABC News did an extensive report that specifically described all these techniques.

So, the idea that this was a great secret and now terrorists can train to them is completely and manifestly untrue. And, as a charge, it is a kind of ruthless politics of national security, of the sort that we have seen Republicans seize on since about four months after 9/11, when Karl Rove basically told the Republican National Committee, look, this is an issue we can win on.

This was January 2002. And you see a kind of reclaiming of this ground, or an attempt to reclaim this ground, from the two Cheneys. And I think the Republican Party in general doesn't want to go in this direction, but they're being, in effect, dragged along, kicking and screaming, by the ubiquitous voice of the former vice president.

I don't think it's good for the country. But I agree with David Gergen that it's at least interesting to see a public debate and to see President Obama come up and, in a prepared speech -- and I thought a very elegant speech -- try to take on these matters and build a consensus for a sustainable policy. And I emphasize sustainable. He wants something that we won't fight about, that can be submitted to the rule of law, that the Supreme Court will not throw out, that can last over the length of the so-called war on terror.

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Anderson Cooper had some tough questions for Liz Cheney, but like any good Villager comes out swinging initially but fails to do any real follow up after Cheney lies to him repeatedly. It was nice to see someone actually call bulls#@t on some of her talking points though. It's more than I can say for Chuck Todd. Cheney also basically admits that her father's reason for speaking out has more to do with protecting his own hide than national security. The transcript of the full interview is available here.

COOPER: Most former vice presidents walk off the public stage quietly, at least for a while, but not Dick Cheney. His tough talk seems to be working for him. His approval rating, now 37 percent, has jumped eight points since leaving office in January. President Bush's approval rating has risen six points, to 41 percent, from 35.

Dick Cheney's daughter Liz served in the State Department during Bush administration, has been an outspoken defender of her father's record as vice president. She joins us now.

Thanks for being here.

LIZ CHENEY: Great to be here. Thanks, Anderson.

COOPER: Is it -- is it appropriate for your father to be so out in front right now so soon after leaving office, essentially mocking the sitting president of the United States?

L. CHENEY: Well, he's not mocking the sitting president. But I think that...

COOPER: Well, saying he's pandering to Europe?

L. CHENEY: He is pandering to Europe.

I mean, I think that -- that, you know, there's sort of a level of political nicety that's important to observe, except in certain circumstances. And one of those circumstances is where the national security of the nation is at risk, as my father feels strongly that it is.

I don't think he planned to be doing this, you know, when they left office in January. But I think, as it became clear that President Obama was not only going to be stopping some of these policies, that he was going to be doing things like releasing the -- the techniques themselves, so that the terrorists could now train to them, that he was suggesting that perhaps we would even be prosecuting former members of the Bush administration, I think my dad began to feel very strongly that somebody needed to speak out, that this needed to be a full airing of views, and not a one-sided mischaracterization of the last eight years.

COOPER: But these -- you know, these are techniques which have been around. I mean, the Nazis used them. The -- the Khmer Rouge used them. The -- the North Koreans used them. So, it's not as if terrorists were unfamiliar with these techniques, if they wanted to train for them. And I'm not sure you really can train for torture or -- or enhanced interrogation.

L. CHENEY: Well, I think, first of all -- yes, I mean, I would question the premise there.

I think that you have got to look at the legal memos, actually, which now you can do. The legal memos are very clear. And this was a -- a very carefully designed program, and it was a program that the CIA designed, that they had the lawyers look at to make sure that the line that divided sort of rough treatment from torture wouldn't be crossed.

But the important point here, though, there's a big difference between a terrorist sort of Googling, you know, techniques that might be used and a terrorist who can now pull up these memos and actually see, OK, well, they're going to be able to do this, you know, to me for this many minutes, but I know they won't cross that line.

What the president has done is ensure that no future president can use any of these techniques. So, that's a big step. And that's a step that I think really does endanger the country.

And, frankly, if the president himself in the future is faced with a ticking-time-bomb scenario, it's not clear to me, you know, what exactly he will do, even though he's reserved to himself the right to take action like these techniques.

COOPER: Is it appropriate, though, for your father, who has had access to high-level intelligence for -- for eight years, to be very publicly waving a flag, saying, we're much weaker now than ever before? Isn't that, in fact, emboldening our enemies? Couldn't you make that argument?

L. CHENEY: I think that it is a moral obligation to stand up and say, wait a second. You know, when you...

COOPER: But you can write letters. You can -- you can have meetings with the president. He could have a meeting with the president and say very firmly, "This is what I believe," and the president would either listen to him or not.

But to stand up publicly and -- if...

Well,. Yes. No, absolutely.

COOPER: If a Democrat was doing this in a Republican administration, wouldn't be the Republicans be saying, this is traitorous?

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Apparently Pete King either hasn't read Janis Karpinski's book, or he thinks that the rest of the public hasn't and will believe his spin while arguing with the ACLU's Anthony Romero on Face the Nation. I had a hard time watching Congressman King because he looked like he was so excited he was hyperventilating for the entire interview while he made the ACLU out to be pretty much the equivalent of evil incarnate.

Everyone knows the ACLU is just an evil, partisan, liberal front group and would never come to the defense of someone like oohhhh... a Rush Limbaugh....right?

Heaven forbid we might want some accountability for torturing prisoners which we are finding out came from the top, was as Mr. Romero indicated wide spread, and was not used to keep America safe, but to justify invading another country that was never a threat to us.

You can watch the entire exchange at CBS's web site.

Smith: Let's move on to the interrogation photos. It's a rather significant reversal of Obama policy because it was quite clear, two courts have already decided these photos should be made public. Then apparently on the advice of Gen. Odierno and Defense Sec. Gates, that these photos should be held. What do you think?

Romero: Well we're all concerned about the safety of our soldiers. That's obvious. Look what's also true is that it's not the photos that put them at risk. It's the policies that authorized torture and abuse that was authorized at the highest levels and then went down the chain of command across the theaters of war. When we're talking about 2000 photos that talk about abuse or torture in American custody, we're not talking about a few rogue apples.

We're not talking about a few rogue soldiers. We're talking about decisions made at the highest levels of our government and the only way to deal with that would be to have investigations and prosecutions to insure accountability.

Smith: We'll get to that in just a second. Congressman, should these photos be made public or should they be kept secret?

King: Absolutely not. They serve absolutely no purpose and it is absolutely wrong to say this was approved at the highest levels of government. Not just President Bush, but President Obama, President Obama said that those who were guilty of this have been punished. It was a few people and the fact is anyone involved in this absolutely disgraceful conduct, they should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. But to somehow think that by floating all these pictures out there, somehow we're going to find that somebody at a high level was involved, this is absolutely wrong.

It does put our troops in danger and it serves no purpose other than to denigrate and down grade the military of the United States and this canard is always out there. People at the highest levels approved it. I don't know anyone at the highest levels that approved Abu Ghraib, but if President Barack Obama for a moment thought that somebody at a high level had approved it he would go after them.

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Last night Bill O'Reilly unleashed one of his patented Falafel Jihads against the ole-time liberal-hater's favorite, the ACLU, for having had the audacity not only to sue to have those photos of detainee abuse released, but to have actually won in court.

For that, O'Reilly last night flatly accused the ACLU of setting out to harm the nation, and in fact being solely motivated by the desire to hold the country up to humiliation and expose our soldiers to harm. Seriously. Of course, he produces nary a scintilla of evidence to buttress his claims, but then, he's Bill O'Reilly. He doesn't have to.

What's clearly never occurred to O'Reilly is the reality that what he's looking at is one of the very pragmatic and practical reasons American forces have historically eschewed torture: Indulging it not only gives our enemies a rationale to employ it on our own soldiers when captured, but in fact motivates them to capture our soldiers solely for the purpose of retaliatory torture.

That has been one of the little-observed but longstanding and overwhelming ethical reasons to oppose any kind of torture for these prisoners, and has been all along, ever since it was outlawed internationally and nationally: that condoning any kind of abuse provides a pretext for our enemies to do the same, or worse, to American prisoners held abroad.

Moreover, the inevitable Arab anger over the photos further demonstrates know that torturing prisoners makes us less safe -- because, as the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate indicated, these actions provide a profound motivation for radicalizing young Muslims. Another study, as Fox recently reported, found a concrete connection between the Abu Ghraib torture photos and the recruitment of suicide bombers in Iraq.

No one wants to put American soldiers deeper in harm's way. But Bill O'Reilly needs to be confronted with the cold fact that it wasn't the actions of the ACLU that put them in that position -- it was the profoundly unwise policy choices of the Bush administration, and its many, many apologists for instituting a torture regime.

Bill O'Reilly, of course, being among the foremost cheerleaders.

(Everything but tar and feathers)

Following up yesterdays post and the interview with Alfred McCoy, I located two later interviews, both done by Philip Adams on his Late Night Live radio program for ABC National in Australia. The first one, from May 22, 2006 features former Lt.Gen. Janis Karpinski and her role in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and the second half is an interview from June 6, 2006 with former weapons inspector and detainee adviser Rod Barton.

Both worth a listen, especially in light of the recent "What Us, Torture?" tour currently going on.

We were wondering this morning whether Robert Gibbs' noncommittal responses yesterday signaled that President Obama was getting cold feet about allowing the release of the latest round of detainee-abuse photos.

Sure enough, it did:

WASHINGTON - Defense and military officials tell NBC News that President Obama will seek to delay the release of hundreds of photos which reportedly depict the abuse of prisoners by U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is expected to announce Obama's decision.

The Pentagon has said it will release the pictures this month.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq met with Obama at the White House Tuesday to ask the administration not to release the photos. Defense officials say Odierno is "vehemently opposed" to the release because he fears it could create a widespread "backlash" against military forces in both war zones.

According to one official, "It would put a bullseye on the backs of our forces."

According to military officials many of the photos are similar to the infamous prisoner abuse photos out of Abu Ghraib prison, but some of these photos reportedly include mug shots of prisoners who appear to have been badly beaten during their capture or interrogation.

The photos were gathered in the course of dozens of military investigations of prisoner abuse between 2001 and 2006.

At this point, it looks like Obama plans to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, and if they lose there (as they have at all previous levels), they won't have any choice about releasing them.

In the meantime, they'll now be using up their political capital to defend Dick Cheney and his merry band of torturers. Now, that's a lovely prospect, isn't it? I'm sure Cheney will repay him generously for the effort.

It would be nice, though, if someone took the time to point out once again that the very fears about Arab reaction to these photos, and the consequences for our soldiers in the field -- not to mention the radicalizing effect it has, effectively creating future terrorists -- are exactly the main reason why torture doesn't, can't, and never will keep us safe. And why Cheney and Co. utterly failed to actually keep Americans safe, not just during their tenure, but for the foreseeable future.

Get ready for Abu Ghraib Redux:

[N]ow a new batch of photographs, perhaps hundreds of images, of prisoners being abused is about to be made public. It comes at a time when the debate over prisoner mistreatment is still roiling America's political and public conscience. The new photographs are being made public in a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union. And the Pentagon, after fighting, and losing, three federal court reviews of the matter, has waved the white flag and is now preparing to release the pictures. Some of the photographs are official; some, like the original Abu Ghraib collection, taken informally by soldiers. "We know this could make things tougher for our troops," a senior Pentagon official says, "but the court decisions really don't leave us with any other option."

Fox's Shepard Smith and Catherine Herridge presented the Fox version of this story yesterday, reporting that May 28 is the date set for the release of at least some of the photos. Herridge says that someone who's seen them told her none of them are as bad as the Abu Ghraib shots, but about 44 of them could be very ugly indeed.

And there's this note:

Smith: Some of the critics are really labeling this 'Abu Ghraib Part II.'

Herridge: Well, you remember that after Abu Ghraib there was worldwide condemnation for these images of humiliation. And I learned in my research today that there was also a military report in 2008 that concluded that there is a connection between these images and also suicide bombers. Forty-eight bombers, or potential bombers, were interviewed, and they said that these images were a big factor, a big motivating factor, in the decision to become a suicide bomber.

This in fact comports with that 2006 National Intelligence Estimate [PDF file] that found that Bush's war in Iraq had actually created the conditions for a future ripe with terrorist attacks; or, as the New York Times put it, "helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism." Among the real motivators for terrorist recruitment, it found, was the torture regime the Bush administration set up in places like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

If anyone thought that photos from those centers would not eventually leak out to the public -- or at the bare minimum, be forced out eventually by the inevitable lawsuits, as was the case here -- they were fooling themselves. Or at least gambling that they'd be out of office by then and could lay the whole mess in the laps of whoever had the misfortune to succeed them.

Indeed, the Obama critics are now out in force shouting that the pending release of these photos will hurt soldiers in the field, including Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham. Bill Kristol is claiming that "this would be a gratuitous assault on the well-being and the reputation of our fighting men and women."

But of course, they can't answer the cold fact that these photos are a product of the Bush administration's misbegotten policies, and the reaction to them from the Arab world -- indeed, the rest of the world -- puts the lie to Dick Cheney's claim that "enhanced interrogations" kept us safe.

In fact, over the long run, they have made us quantifiably less safe. And cleaning out this festering wound once and for all is the only hope we have of healing it.

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April 23, 2009 Anderson Cooper 360.

COOPER: Two big stories happening right now, the breaking news, the ACLU saying that we will soon be getting another batch of photos depicting prisoner abuse, not just in Iraq, but also Afghanistan, that and the latest threat to America's vital ally in the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban, Pakistan.

[....]

COOPER: Let's talk about these photos that the ACLU has just said that -- new photos that they say show U.S. personnel abusing prisoners in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

We know that -- that the techniques, the interrogation techniques used in -- in Guantanamo Bay, used in these CIA black sites, we know that they were used at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. We know they were also obviously used at -- at Abu Ghraib and other sites.

What do you make of this report that new photos are coming out?

ZAKARIA: It's pretty troubling, Anderson.

You know, I tracked the -- the -- public support in Iraq for the U.S. occupation very carefully. And the month before Abu Ghraib, the -- the photographs from Abu Ghraib came out, there were about 60 percent of Iraqis were still supportive of the U.S. occupation.

It dropped almost 25 points over the course of the two months that the -- that the Abu Ghraib photos came out. This stuff really has a major effect on our reputation, on our image abroad. It changes what our allies can do, because they're scared of their publics.

This is one of the reasons why I think this broader issue of whether the United States should engage in practices that are really outside of the pale, this is not just a technical legal issue. It has huge foreign policy implications.

COOPER: Fareed Zakaria, appreciate your joining us tonight. Fareed, thanks very much.