In the Spirit of Logic

The New York Times recently published an editorial titled “In the Spirit of Openness.”
It begins, “When he was vice president, Dick Cheney never acknowledged
the public’s right to know anything. Now, suddenly, he has the full
disclosure bug.”

How did Cheney catch this “full disclosure bug”? Could it in fact be
an allergic reaction to some recent event or another—I don’t know, say,
the Obama administration’s censorious partial disclosure of the
enhanced interrogation memos with all of the spoilers blacked out?

The Times mocks Cheney’s statement that the decision to release the
memos “inspired” him to ask the CIA to release full transcripts of the
interrogations. Might “inspired” be a euphemism for “forced”?

The Times continues: “Mr. Cheney was not being entirely honest… and
his logic is confounding. If releasing the memos leaves this country
open to a devastating terrorist attack… imagine the potential harm from
revealing all of the secrets gleaned from the three most ‘high value’
terrorists captured since Sept. 11, 2001.”

Let’s examine Cheney’s supposed breakdown in logic. Releasing the
memos, which detail the nature and limits of the U.S.’s enhanced
interrogation techniques, inarguably makes our country more vulnerable
to attack, because it increases terrorists’ understanding of our
methods and what is needed to resist them.

In contrast, Cheney’s suggestion of releasing the interrogation
transcripts to show that these techniques worked reaffirms our
commitment to using them, no matter what naysayers like Obama claim.
Releasing the transcripts blunts critics’ self-destructive accusation
that these techniques are too harsh to be used by our military, and
must be exposed as scandalous; releasing the transcripts reveals a boob
like Obama to be irrelevant. It is the equivalent of saying, “Don’t
listen to that strange guy babbling in the corner—that’s just our crazy
uncle talking to himself again.”

The Times insists that releasing the interrogation transcripts will
disclose information about intercepted terrorist plots. So? Didn’t the
terrorist networks planning these attacks already know about them, by
definition? Hasn’t the Bush administration expounded in great detail on
numerous foiled terrorist schemes, including novel methods terrorists
have attempted, such as shoe bombing and assembling liquid explosives
in-flight?

The terrorists are the ones who will be the least surprised by the transcripts. The people who will be most surprised
are Americans who have been lulled into accepting the left’s diatribe
about the techniques being “inexcusable,” “contrary to our values,”
“against the American way of life,” etc. These voters are bound to
change their minds once they learn precisely how successful those
techniques have been at keeping them safe for the past seven-and-a-half
years—which is why the Obama administration is keen on their not
receiving this information.

What is especially galling is that Obama is the one feigning full
disclosure, by releasing the interrogation memos, but having the
Justice Department black out sections that show how the interrogation
techniques worked. This would be like a newspaper’s editor-in-chief (1)
preparing a company memo chronicling how a senior journalist violated
newsroom standards by quoting an anonymous source, (2) blacking out the
part of the report showing that the journalist corroborated the
source’s information with other named, credible sources, and (3)
claiming the journalist did not engage in “full disclosure.”

To the Obama administration, “full disclosure” apparently means
“showing the parts that could be embarrassing for Bush and Cheney, and
blotting out the rest with a Sharpie.”

Cheney originally preferred, justifiably, not to declassify the
memos. He knew that doing so would reveal important information about
our intelligence-gathering techniques, which the enemy could then
better resist by understanding the limits and precautions incorporated
in those techniques—e.g., “throwing” a detainee up against a “wall”
made of rubber so as not to cause internal injuries, using a collar
while doing so to prevent a detainee’s neck from being broken,
employing a simulation of drowning that can be performed many times
over a short period with no permanent harm. Once the Obama
administration blew the lid off these memos, Cheney realized the only
way to defend these techniques was to reveal how successful they had
been in gathering intelligence.

The Times piece smarmily concludes, “We can’t imagine how such an
investigation [of the interrogations] can move ahead without Mr.
Cheney’s testimony. But given the former vice president’s new devotion
to full disclosure, we’re sure he’ll be happy to comply.”

A thought experiment: Suppose the techniques had not been
effective, or that their effectiveness had been debatable. Would Cheney
now be chomping at the bit to have the interrogation transcripts
released?

Suppose that the techniques had been effective. Would the
Times still object to Bush and Cheney being able to use these
transcripts to defend their actions, if releasing this evidence were
the only way they could acquit themselves of spurious charges of
violating the law?  (Of course The Times would, but bear with me.) 
Given Cheney’s push for full disclosure of the transcripts, one can
only assume the evidence will back him up, and that those who call his
bluff will look like fools.

Openness for openness’ sake, no matter what the consequences for
intelligence gathering and Americans’ safety, is suicidal. Openness for
the sake of rebuilding the perception of our military as strong and
unyielding, and disproving scurrilous accusations by ignorant
politicians who fail to practice openness themselves, is eminently
sensible.

There is confounding logic being thrown around here, but not by former Vice President Cheney.