It makes a difference whether or not print media outlets are willing to call torture “torture.” Just look at this snippet from the Associated Press:
In July 2004, despite growing internal concerns about the CIA’s brutal interrogation methods, senior members of George W. Bush’s national security team gave the agency permission to employ the harsh tactics against an al Qaida facilitator the agency suspected was linked to a plot to disrupt the upcoming presidential election.
After weeks of torture that included being subjected to prolonged stress positions and sleep deprivation at a secret site in Romania, the prisoner, Janat Gul, begged to be killed. But he steadfastly denied knowledge of any plot, CIA records show leading interrogators to conclude he was not the hardened terrorist they thought he was, and that the informant who fingered him was a liar.
Yet there is no evidence the CIA relayed that information to the White House and the Justice Department, which continued to cite the case in legal justifications for the use of the brutal techniques.
They tortured a guy who knew nothing until he begged to die. Only then did it begin to dawn on them that they were making the government of Syria look good by comparison.
Of course, it doesn’t matter that they had the wrong guy. Let’s not pretend that that makes even an iota of difference on the moral plane, because it doesn’t.
I’m also well aware that it’s part of the CIA’s job description to do what they are told and to shoulder all the blame when their crimes are exposed. But the history does cut both ways. The CIA has often done what it wants without informing the administration, acting with the arrogance of a permanent institution that doesn’t have to lower itself to deal openly with an institution that changes leadership every four to eight years.