Today, McClathy reported that:

"The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees [torture] in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist."

I'm disgusted by this revelation, of course. But I'm glad for it too.

I'm glad that this story is out because it gives us an opportunity to show-up what has seemed to me to be the key strength in the Bush Administration's arguments for torture. So far, the Bush Administration has been able to say things like "well, these were dangerous terrorists and there was no other way..." blah, blah, blah, and "we had to torture them to keep America safe."

But arguments like that equivocate. The truth is, and now we can finally discuss it, is that there are at least 3 different torture "scenarios," and only now (with this story) are we seeing that the Bush Administration used torture in all three "scenarios" rather than just in scenario 1 or 1 & 2.

The "scenarios" I'm talking about are like this:

1) The classic "24" scenario. You have a known terrorist in custody, and you know that this terrorist knows the details of specific attack that is about to go down. He won't tell you where the attack is going to go down or give other details that would allow the Administration to thwart the attack, so he's tortured. This is the scenario where the Bush Administration's pro-torture argument is rhetorically strongest, and so its not surprising that all along they have characterized their use of waterboarding as occurring in this type of scenario.

2) The "investigative torture" scenario. In this scenario, you have a known terrorist in custody, but no information about a specific threat from that terrorist's group. So, in order to find out if that terrorist group is planning an attack, you torture him. The Bush Administration's argument for torture is less rhetorically pleasing in this scenario, but still strong. Given the time that some of these terrorists were in custody, its probably safe to say that most of the torture was of this variety.

3) The "recreational torture" scenario. This is the scenario that today's revelations most closely mirror. You have a known terrorist in custody, you torture him "investigatively" as in scenario 2, but then you go a step further. You just start using torture to find out whether you know what you don't know. North Korea is a threat to the U.S., so did this terrorist group ever talk to a North Korean? Hmmm, interesting question, let's find out by torturing him. Any ties to Iraq? Dunno! So let's torture him, maybe something will drop... And so on and so forth.

I think its time to start really asking how much of the Bush Adminsitration's torturing was of the "recreational" variety. In particular, I have always wondered about all of those people picked up in Afghanistan during the anti-Taliban operations. Northern Alliance forces were constantly bringing in people and saying "he's a terrorist" or "he's a Taliban" in order to collect cash rewards from the CIA operatives there. So, the question is, with no better information than that (for a large cash reward the Northern Alliance gave us this guy and say he's a terrorist) how do you know if this guy is a terrorist or not?

What I want to know is, did the Bush Administration answer this question by torturing these guys, not because they were al qaida, but to find out IF they were al qaida?

I think that armed with such information, support for the Bush Administration's torture policy would become less virulent. Its one thing to know that the terrorist knows something that you need to know and to torture him for it, and quite another to torture someone to find out what you don't know.