So Obama released the torture memos yesterday. These are memos written by the legal masterminds at the Department of Justice who think keeping a person awake for 11 days is a good way to acquire accurate, totally-not-crazy information. And that dudes who have been behind bars for 8 years still somehow have quality inside information about terror plans.

Here is the list of interrogation tactics that were approved:

Attention grasp, walling (hitting a detainee against a flexible wall), facial hold, facial slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, insects placed in a confinement box, and waterboarding.

I’m not completely sure what there is to debate on this topic. I have yet to hear anyone say that torture is a great way to get information. So no one is pro-torture. The argument is over what constitutes torture. Which, come on. Don’t play stupid, dudes. You know that making someone fear for his life in order to elicit information is pretty much the textbook definition of torture. Admit it: you’re just being dicks.

The only way to possibly win this debate is to prove that information obtained by “insects placed in a confinement box” has helped us stop terrorist plots. Because what’s the point of drawing up lengthy memos giving permission to engage in tactics that are completely useless? But I haven’t heard a shred of evidence that these tactics helped us. How long have we been fighting wars and capturing enemies? And we still haven’t figured out how to obtain information from them?

Here’s the best comment I’ve read so far on the memos, from Politico:

A former top official in the administration of President George W. Bush called the publication of the memos “unbelievable.”

“It’s damaging because these are techniques that work, and by Obama’s action today, we are telling the terrorists what they are,” the official said. “We have laid it all out for our enemies. This is totally unnecessary. … Publicizing the techniques does grave damage to our national security by ensuring they can never be used again — even in a ticking-time-bomb scenario where thousands or even millions of American lives are at stake.”

This guy’s argument is that terrorists now know our secret patented torture techniques, so they’ll know ahead of time that we’re going to slap them and push them against the wall, and they’ll be prepared and won’t be tortured by those techniques anymore. Because they had never heard about slapping and pushing against walls before this. And then when there’s a ticking-time-bomb scenario that has never really happened but might possibly some day and we need to interrogate people super quickly, slaps won’t work anymore because Obama’s release of the memos totally negates the power of slaps. Whoever this top official is (Dick Cheney), he sure is el smarto.

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