Excerpt:
In the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., many national-security hawks are quietly reevaluating their position on the use of the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Because of newly declassified documents, they now realize they were misled about the effectiveness of the techniques. The position shift echoes John Maynard Keynes' famous line: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
Their shift, which I noticed during a recent visit to the nation's capitol, is one I understand. The first time I evaluated these techniques--which include stripping, slapping and waterboarding interrogation subjects--was as the foreign policy analyst on Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. On one side, there were reports and expert briefings claiming that they were instrumental to break terrorists who otherwise refused to cooperate, thereby allowing investigators to gain life-saving actionable intelligence.