Let’s assume the latest reports are correct:  In early 2003 then-Vice President Cheney specifically ordered  the “waterboarding” of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the highest ranking member of al Qaeda to have been captured by the United States and the man who devised the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Let’s assume also that the CIA informed leaders of Congress that such “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” (a term Orwell would love) might be used to get presumed terrorists to talk.

I am convinced that in early 2003 most Americans would have condoned such actions.  America had been attacked by a stateless, hidden and un-uniformed enemy and the United States was desperately in search of an effective response.  An unconventional attack called for an unconventional response.  “Wanted:  Dead or Alive,” was the way Bush articulated and exploited that sentiment to create a consensus for swift and violent accountability directed against anyone who might be an “evildoer.”

The first problem was that torture — let’s call it this — was applied indiscriminately, just as were renditions (another Orwellian term), and long-term Guantanamo detentions.  At the risk of letting a terrorist get away, many non-terrorists were captured, detained, humiliated and tortured.  We are still dealing with the legacy of these actions.

The second, fundamental problem was that the torture, apart from its illegality, apparently did not yield much useful information.  In some cases it was counterproductive, since the object of torture will say anything to get the torture to stop.  Just ask John McCain.

Some on the Left now argue that there was a grand design in the Bush White House to employ torture in order to produce “confessions” that would help justify the U.S. attack and invasion of Iraq.  They argue that just as unsubstantiated intelligence reports made the case for WMD in Iraq, torture-induced admissions were sought in order to confirm ties between al Qaeda and Iraq.  Such a design, if it existed (which I doubt), was hardly grand.  It was simply stupid.  It was inevitable and foreseeable that torture-induced intelligence would be uncovered and greeted with skepticism if not disbelief.

Now Cheney would have the U.S. government release documents to show that “enhanced interrogation techniques” yielded important and accurate information.  Pelosi would now have the U.S. government establish a “Truth Commission” that would make plain that the Bush Administration misled Congress and the public.  All Obama seemingly wants to do is to deal with the current mess in Afghanistan and Pakistan, devilishly hard enough as it is, without adding complications brought on by a new release of damning photos.

Obama will need to improvise to navigate his way forward, but he needs to be guided by a few core truths.  He did the right thing by pledging that his government would not torture.  Now he needs to let official Washington learn again why it should never have strayed from that policy.

BTW, if anyone thinks that “waterboarding” and similar depravities are new, “enhanced” techniques, I refer you to The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitzyn’s description of Stalin’s labor camps.  As Solzhenitzyn observes, “What won’t idle, well-fed, unfeeling people invent?”