Stuart Taylor is a top legal pundit, so, like most people often right, when he gets a bad idea it is a doozy. His proposal that President Bush pardon everyone in his administration save for himself & Dick Cheney, to encourage a "truth commission" inquiry that exposes every sin we have committed in detainee treatment, is a super-doozy. The idea is that with all dirty linen aired publicly, America's moral ledger will be cleansed, at home and abroad, and we can march forward with our heads held high.
Taylor looks old enough to remember America's last "family jewels" epic: a generation ago, when the CIA released 700 pages of misdeeds large & small (full text). The result? An orgy of recrimination, purge of the CIA's Old Guard, passage of laws handcuffing American foreign intelligence collection, ban on assassinations--in all, a badly tarnished world image. The CIA has never recovered, nor has America. It would be worse--far worse--this time, with the global Internet media hothouse. There was no al-Jazeera to report last time, either. Uncertainty beats certainty here, by the proverbial light-years' margin. Almost any video can be made to look bad, plus can educate our adversaries in how we interrogate. Had there been no Abu Ghraib video, would there have been anything like to uproar that ensued?
Worse are..the lawyers. This interrogation clip (1:35) aired on Fox News with commentary by a Heritage Foundation analyst supplying extra detail, shows a 16-year old detainee, one Omar Khadr, being gently interrogated--very gently, with zero coercion. Yet his lawyers think that Canada will take him back, arguing that anyone that young was mistreated even absent violence. At age 15 the detainee, in Afghanistan, was old enough to hurl a grenade that allegedly killed a special forces medic.
But aren't we getting a black eye by not airing stuff? Sure. But a black eye beats two broken legs. If there is a war in history that was won by pre-emptive confession and/or apology, I am not aware of it.
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