Ursula: there's no way any of us would know whether there really was a 'second-wave' plot. .... The idea is powerfully evocative, though, and therefore useful in bringing prublic opinion into line if that became necessary.
What Ursula says could be true IF the memos were written solely to be released later as a form of justification for administration abuses. Of course that requires the byzantine assumption that government officials were planning four (or seven!) years into the future -- when in fact, we mostly know that the government is barely aware of what is happening at any given moment.
_____ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124035706108641065.htmlThe memos give considerable indication both of the sheer quantity, as well as some of the specifics, of the intelligence gathered through the interrogations. "You have informed us," wrote Mr. Bradbury in the May 30, 2005 memo, "that the interrogation of KSM -- once enhanced techniques were employed -- led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the 'Second Wave,' 'to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into' a building in Los Angeles. You have informed us that information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of . . . Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell . . . tasked with the execution of the 'Second Wave.'"
_____There's no way of knowing how much of this issue has become pure politics, that is, pure distortion. Consider the following:
_____ [loc. cit.]the Obama Administration had decided to release four Justice Department memos detailing the CIA's interrogation practices while not giving the full picture of what the interrogations yielded in actionable intelligence. Yes, it really is disturbing, especially given the bogus media narrative that has now developed around those memos.
Thus, contrary to the claim that the memos detail "brutal" techniques used by the CIA in its interrogation of detainees (including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), what they mainly show is the lengths to which the Justice Department went not to cross the line into torture. "Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms," wrote then Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury on the very first page of his May 10, 2005 memo. Regarding waterboarding, an August 2002 memo from then Assistant Attorney General (now federal Judge) Jay Bybee stresses that the CIA had informed him that "the procedures will be stopped if deemed medically necessary to prevent severe mental or physical harm."
_____The temptation to link the public personae of Bush and Cheney (wealthy, corrupt, indifferent to the poor) with the perception of sadism is very strong. In fact, that perception was manipulated by Democrats to their advantage. The new memos show a different picture and the various media scramble -- by denial or omission or defense -- to help people reintegrate their prejudices or worldviews in the face of that new information.
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