"still wrong, still stupid..."

Here's Lithwick on whether torture lead to finding bin Laden, and what that should mean for US policy. I recommend the whole article (and it's short), but here's a representatively good passage:

And here's the genius part: In support of personal policy preferences, facts are wholly optional. Lack of facts can also be highly probative. For example: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was water-boarded 183 times in 2003, lied about knowing Bin Laden's courier, as did Abu Faraj al-Libi, who was interrogated in 2005. They offered no useful information. Yet torture advocates now say that because both men denied knowing the courier—thus tipping off the CIA that he must be someone important—torture must work. Got it? Torture works when the prisoners disclose information, but it also works when they don't. It's win-win!

The fact that we have swamped a debate about the killing of Osama Bin Laden with a distraction over torture is another national embarrassment. Why aren't we debating the efficacy of any of the other intelligence-gathering or surveillance methods that also contributed to the success of the hunt for bin Laden? We are being conned yet again, and allowing ourselves to be conned again, by a handful of people who want to justify their own crimes. Remember all those debates about the need to be allowed to torture in "ticking time bomb" scenarios? We are now having a discussion about an alleged ticking time bomb that took eight years to blow—if it blew at all.

There is just one question about America and torture: whether we should do it. The answer to that, after hundreds of years of legal thinking and moral progress, not just in America but around the world, is no. It's bad for those asked to torture, and it's bad for our soldiers who will be tortured by others. A bunch of Bush officials secretly changed that answer for a time, based on misapprehensions of its efficacy, but for serious interrogators, ethical thinkers, and lawyers, the answer has always been no.

What she said.