Ruth has just put up an MSNBC clip of Wes discussing torture & the destruction of CIA tapes  - these links got too long for a comment, so I'm gathering them here for further reading. 

One of the worst things about the practice of torture is that it lends the other side a legitimate grievance.  The other thing is that - torture simply doesn't work!!!!! In fact, the last two links below explore the relationship between so-called intelligence obtained through torture that was subsequently used to bolster the Bush administrations rush to war. 

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The clock's ticking on torture

Anti-terror agent Jack Bauer routinely beats vital clues out of suspects in TV thriller 24. But West Point military academy has asked 24's makers to tone down the torture, worried that cadets might identify too strongly with his anti-terror tactics. Somewhere in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, there is a nondescript building where the giant creative brains get together who are responsible for creating the TV show 24...

snip
The torture scenes where Bauer has to get ruthless and grit his teeth even more than usual have always been a standard gimmick in 24, but recently they've been headline news because the West Point military academy has asked the producers of 24 to tone the torture theme down.

Apparently West Point cadets think the show represents their country's real situation in a dangerous world, and they have started to envisage themselves as counter-terrorists first, soldiers second, giving scant thought to the exam question about what Custer should have done at the Little Big Horn, and looking forward instead to the first time when they will be obliged to grit their teeth and torture one or more ethnically-named terrorists in order to find - or locate, as the Americans say - the microbe bomb that will go off in 24 hours.

Even more disturbing than the possibility that officer cadets might be thinking like this is that the men they command may be thinking like this. American troops are apparently surging into Iraq with DVDs of 24 stashed in their kit. It was this last part that made my jaw drop. You mean there are still people who actually care enough about 24 to carry a DVD of it? I thought that anyone with a brain in his head quit watching 24 after the first season, when it had already become clear that Jack Bauer's daughter was going to go on getting kidnapped as often as she escaped.

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Human Rights First recently brought a West Point commander and retired military interrogators to Hollywood for meetings with producers of "24" and ABC's "Lost" to talk about their concerns about life imitating art.

One man in the meeting was Tony Lagouranis, a former U.S. Army specialist who questioned prisoners in Baghdad's infamous Abu Ghraib prison and several other facilities around Iraq. He said he saw instances of mock executions like that in "24." Once, some fellow interrogators asked an Iraqi translator to pretend he was being tortured to strike fear in a prisoner, after they had just watched a similar scene on a DVD.

Television is hardly the only factor at play; Lagouranis said many American interrogators are young, receive little training and are pressured by commanders to extract information from prisoners as quickly as they can.

But it's enough of a concern that one professor at a military academy told Savitt that Jack Bauer represented one of his biggest training challenges.

Retired U.S. Army Col. Stu Herrington, who learned interrogation techniques in Vietnam and is an expert asked by the Army to consult on conditions at Guantanimo Bay, said that if Bauer worked for him, he'd be headed for a court-martial.

"I am distressed by the fact that the good guys are depicted as successfully employing what I consider are illegal, immoral and stupid tactics, and they're succeeding," Herrington said. "When the good guys are doing something evil and win, that bothers me."

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from Christy Hardin Smith of FDL: Where Fiction Crosses The Long Gray Line

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer lays it out in an incredible new story:

This past November, U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the creative team behind “24.” Finnegan, who was accompanied by three of the most experienced military and F.B.I. interrogators in the country, arrived on the set as the crew was filming. At first, Finnegan—wearing an immaculate Army uniform, his chest covered in ribbons and medals—aroused confusion: he was taken for an actor and was asked by someone what time his “call” was.

In fact, Finnegan and the others had come to voice their concern that the show’s central political premise—that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security—was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. “I’d like them to stop,” Finnegan said of the show’s producers. “They should do a show where torture backfires.”

The show's creative leader, Joel Surnow, missed the meeting -- he was busy talking to Roger Ailes, the former GOP strategist who runs Fox News Channel, about a conservative version of "The Daily Show." (No, we're not making that up.) Here's what he missed:

Before the meeting, Stuart Herrington, one of the three veteran interrogators, had prepared a list of seventeen effective techniques, none of which were abusive. He and the others described various tactics, such as giving suspects a postcard to send home, thereby learning the name and address of their next of kin. After Howard Gordon, the lead writer, listened to some of Herrington’s suggestions, he slammed his fist on the table and joked, “You’re hired!” He also excitedly asked the West Point delegation if they knew of any effective truth serums.

At other moments, the discussion was more strained. Finnegan told the producers that “24,” by suggesting that the U.S. government perpetrates myriad forms of torture, hurts the country’s image internationally. Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors—cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by “24,” which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, “The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about “24”?’ ” He continued, “The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.”

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 I hate to refer to Andrew Sullivan but at least this is via The Atlantic Monthly he rounds it up well: 

The torture techniques authorized by Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney are not just immoral and illegal; they are a terrible threat to our national security. Why? Because they originated as a means to extract false confessions in totalitarian societies, not as a means to gain actual, workable intelligence, i.e. anything we might hope to think of as the truth. Many of the techniques were mirror images of techniques that American soldiers had been trained to resist if captured by Viet Cong or North Korean or Soviet thugs - the famous SERE training. They had also, of course, been used by the Nazis. Yes, these torture methods, in most cases, left no physical marks - precisely so that captured American soldiers could be shown on television giving confessions as if they were volunteering real information. But they were lying, of course, because torture forced them to lie. And so, in an unknowable number of cases, have the torture-victims of the Bush administration. One thing I'd forgotten, of course, is one central case in which torture did give us actionable intelligence:

"Al Qaeda continues to have a deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction... I can trace the story of a sernior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al Qaeda. Fortunately, this operative is now detained and he has told his story."

The man who spoke those words was Colin Powell at the UN. The "operative", we now know, was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libbi. He was waterboarded and given Bush-approved hypothermia treatment, i.e. frozen till he could take it no longer. It was only then that he told of al Qaeda's links with Saddam's WMDs. Guess what? Libbi subsequently retracted his confession. According to ABC News, the CIA subsequently found al-Libbi "had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment." So I now realize that part of the reason I believed the WMD case for war against Saddam was because the Bush administration had been secretly torturing suspects and got false confessions. The biggest intelligence failure in recent US history - the WMD case in Iraq - was partly created by the torture policy.

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And, from ABC news... "According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi had been subjected to each of the progressively harsher techniques in turn and finally broke after being water boarded and then left to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals.

His statements became part of the basis for the Bush administration claims that Iraq trained al Qaeda members to use biochemical weapons. Sources tell ABC that it was later established that al Libbi had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment.

"This is the problem with using the waterboard. They get so desperate that they begin telling you what they think you want to hear," one source said.

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The presidency is now a criminal conspiracy
Olbermann: Bush may not observe the rules, but the country abides by them
   
MSNBC video Special Comment: On waterboarding and torture by Keith Olbermann

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WKC: The question is higher than the agency. It's a question for the political system of the United States.  Are we a country who tortures, even for national security? I always thought we weren't. That's why I was in uniform. I thought it was the bad guys who tortured. I know we did it in the name of national security. But that's the argument used by every dictatorship around the world. They're always concerned about their "national security." 

Thanks General Clark.