Sun burn

David Ignatius comes to an odd conclusion regarding Obama's (court ordered) decision to release the torture memos.

America will be better off, in the long run, for Obama's decision to expose the past practice of torture and ban its future use. But meanwhile, the country is fighting a war, and it needs to take care that the sunlight of exposure doesn't blind its shadow warriors.

I'm unclear here. What "war" is he talking about? The war in Iraq? Is he suggesting we should permit CIA agents carte blanche there? Is he pushing the Bush administration argument that the Geneva Conventions are for pussies? Or Afghanistan? I'm sure members of the Taliban will be easily scared by waterboarding...maybe after the 183rd time, anyway.

No, he must mean the Global War on Terror (GWOT), which, since you can't declare war on a tactic, will go on and on and on. Should we shield our CIA operatives' eyes (or our own) forever?

The problem here is not the decision to release the memos. The problem here -- and what the CIA should be really pissed about -- was the decision by the Cheney/Rumsfeld junta (and the small animal torturers the administration went to for legal counsel) to demand that the CIA use torture in the first place. Without any regard for its efficacy, let alone its morality.