Obama opens can ‘O “torture” worms.

More egg for your face, Mr. President? The attempt by the Obama administration to play politics with intelligence gathering and national security this week detonated in their collective face after the president’s own National Intelligence Director, Admiral Dennis Blair, admitted that the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation techniques provided critical information in the War on Terror. Ahem, excuse  me, I meant “in Overseas Contingency Operations.” George Orwell move over.

[NY Times] “High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.

The Obama camp is now backspinning on that redacted memo, claiming it came at too high a cost to our public image. Yeah? Tell that to the families of 3,000 murdered 9-11 victims. But it is the Obama camp that now looks confused.

Besides, if they really felt that way they wouldn’t have attempted to hide Blair’s admission and sympathy with his predecessors, comments which weren’t included in their very selective release of just four memos. As former Vice-president Dick Cheney mentioned, if they really have nothing to hide, why not release the remainder of the memos?

As for the newest exposed methods themselves: “Walling” with a rubber wall? Placing a caterpillar on a bugphobic terrorist? Boxed “Confinement was limited to two hours.” And even waterboarding of the mastermind of 9-11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, was in short bursts not exceeding 40 seconds.

Seriously? If this is “torture” we really have watered down the word beyond meaning. Anything remotely uncomfortable or psychologically tricky is now torture apparently. Our enemy, meanwhile, publishes Internet videos of scimitar sword beheadings, whether military capture or Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl. But we’re going to wring our hands over caterpillars. It’s actually kind of embarassing how impotant and humane our “inhumaness.”

Explains former Bush Justice Department lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey:

All of these interrogation methods have been adapted from the U.S. military’s own Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (or SERE) training program, and have been used for years on thousands of American service members with the full knowledge of Congress. This has created a large body of information about the effect of these techniques, on which the CIA was able to draw in assessing the likely impact on the detainees and ensuring that no severe pain or long term psychological impact would result.

The actual intelligence benefits of the CIA program are also detailed in these memos. The CIA believed, evidently with good reason, that the enhanced interrogation program had indeed produced actionable intelligence about al Qaeda’s plans. First among the resulting successes was the prevention of a “second wave” of al Qaeda attacks, to be carried out by an “east Asian” affiliate, which would have involved the crashing of another airplane into a building in Los Angeles.

The interrogation techniques described in these memos are indisputably harsh, but they fall well short of “torture.” They were developed and deployed at a time of supreme peril [2002], as a means of preventing future attacks on innocent civilians both in the U.S. and abroad.

“Not exactly Torquemada,” adds Rich Lowry.