“Honest Policy Differences” and Other Lies

By Scott Horton

The key emerging defense of the torture-enablers is to say that the debate about torture is all a matter of simple policy differences, that we have one group historically who believe that certain harsh techniques are fine and are not, in fact “torture,” and another group who take a different view. Keith Olbermann does an outstanding job of tackling and exposing the pile of lies on which this “honest policy debate” argument is built in this segment from last night’s Countdown:

Olbermann builds his case on the definitive law review article on the subject, written by a federal judge and former judge advocate general, Evan Wallach, which is best studied in its entirety.