Playing the Expectations Game

Slate for April 22 has yet another headline referring to the torture of detainees by various intelligence agencies. Speaking of intelligence, it is an article of faith on the liberal side of the free press that the Bush Administration didn't have any. There is a real problem for the anti-Bush group in how to portray W and his cronies as the worst threat to American liberties since George III, while also making clear that the Bushites were stupid, incompetent, and unqualified for their high positions.

Today's torture story synchs up with that image, and that's why it will be persuasive to many people. The assertion is made that before they adopted the program of harsh interrogation, the Bush people didn't do their homework. They didn't realize that some of these tactics were defined as torture in government manuals, they didn't realize that people had been prosecuted for engaging in some of them, and they even know that our training program was designed to render them ineffective - so how could they work on Al Qaeda?

Actually, there isn't enough "there" there to make that last point. After the Korean War, when it became obvious that a lot of American soldiers succumbed to torture, the military began counter-interrogation training. What we don't know is whether it was actually any good, or whether other countries adopted similar programs. Now, if John McCain is an example, the Vietnam-era military may have stood up to torture better than their predecessors in Korea. On the other hand, McCain was regarded as exceptionally heroic, he was an officer, he came from a naval family ... maybe we cannot generalize from his case.

Anyway, there is more to come of this story.