Jonathan Bernstein explains why the bin Laden killing re-kindled the torture debate:
One way to look at it is that torture, right now, clearly divides the parties; indeed, it’s probably the national security/foreign affairs issue that most clearly divides them. After all, attempts by some movement conservatives to claim a division over terrorism (with Barack Obama secretly on the side of the terrorists) is going to be pretty much a non-starter from now on, and the other phony divisions (such as the silly “exceptionalism” thing) never had much of a chance to begin with. Torture has the advantage of being a non-fictional difference between the parties.
Torture is illegal. That’s what I cannot wrap my head around here. In this morning’s WSJ, we have a former attorney general defending something clearly and indisputably illegal. The DOJ described the absurd reasoning of Bush’s OLC – that the technique of waterboarding displayed in Cambodia’s Museum of Torture is not torture as long as Americans do it – as deeply shoddy and unprofessional.
The Dish 