According to TV commentators on CNN, former Vice-President Cheney criticized the decision of the Obama administration to release the memos on torture arguing, ironically, that more should be released on this same subject; specifically, the memos that show how much information was acquired through the torture methods.
At the same time, Presdient Obama was explaining to CIA personell his reasons for releasing the memos and banning torture as a method of gaining intellingence.
Cheney did not get it. Cheney believes, evidently. that a nation can act immorally if it gets what it wants from this immorral action. Such immorality has no negative cost.
President Obama, on the other hand, did not make the argument to discontinue torture based on intelligence gathering criteria, although such an arguement could have been made. Rather, he made the arguement from the Scriptures: "What does it profit a man (nation) if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul." Obama said that respect for the law and human rights is foundational to what America should be and that to lose this part of our soul puts the whole nation at risk.
This is the first time in a long time that a President has actually honored the age old Judeo-Christian values on morality, despite the fact that they all have said that they are profoundly religious. Just to be clear about it, the reason to be in sinc with Judeo-Christian valus on this issue is not to demonstrate some kind of faithfulness to ancient values of the faiths, but rather, because history has proven the prophetic version of truth to be reliable: that a nation or a society that violates what it knows are basic moral principles is a nation that is doomed to failure, and, no matter what the strength of their armies or, we might say, the effectiveness of their intelligence in producing informaiton, will eventually suffer because of this immorality.
In addition to the absolute hypocrisy of wanting more disclosure, considering Cheney's unfaltering defense of secrecy during his time in the White House, the arguement that knowing how much information we might get from prisoners by using torture might persuade us to join the ranks of the most brutal and immoral nations on the earth for the sake of gaining this information is an arguement that will, so to speak, send our nationa straight to hell. On the other hand, a person who does not mind lying to the nation and the world about the reasons to go to war, has already demonstrated that they have the requisite lack of morality necessary for destroying the soul of the nation, not to mention sending us all into economic tailspin and national bankruptcy.
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