If we are going to get to the bottom of the torture madness, I think we are going to have to use some method other than a standard Senate investigation. I think that what we need instead is to have a high-level database of documents that can be used by any senator to investigate some or all of the facts and make a public report.
The database would contain anything relevant that any qualified individual or group of individuals wanted it to contain. That is, if Senator XYZ (R) want some disculpatory documents in, they would be in; if Senator ZYX (D) want some kind of smoking gun document in, it would be in. Standard classification/security measures would be in force, and this database would not be public: only the reports, containing no official secrets, would be public.
In other words, what you'd have is a number of relatively independent investigations, from various political points of view, and with different interests and focii. All investigators would have access to the same data. If someone uncovered something new, everyone would have access to it and to the other draft or finished reports, and could respond to other reports and amend their own.
There are several reasons why this wiki-like approach seems advantageous to me.
First, we would be able to move past the concept of "bipartisanship". Each group could be as partisan as it wished, yet the entire endeavor would be basically nonpartisan due to the shared information and the freedom to revise, extend, and respond to the other reports (There would be a certain kind of partisanship, I think, since the facts basically condemn what Bush and his conservative fellow travelers did, so reality is sort of partisan in and of itself. Oh well.)
Second, there would be, in effect, no "finding of fact" by any single committee or group. Instead, there would be the reports and the people who read them could make up their own minds. For example, if every group with a right-wing orientation said X and every group with a progressive orientation said Y, I think it is better for the people to read what their rationale is, instead of, say, a progressive committee chairmen deciding that most of Y and some of X is the consensus.
Third, I think there would be much more information released to the people using the method. Yes, there would also be more spinning and counter-spinning, but at least this way individuals (and third-parties such as journalists) could try to balance everything out for themselves.
Fourth, I think that there would be less resistance to the concept of a truth-finding initiative using this method. That is, the GOP could, if they chose, issue their own independent report attempting to conceal and/or justify whatever they wanted. Everyone else could, in response, report the evidence and logic contradicting that. And, of course, vice-versa.
Fifth, this semi- wiki method is very Internet-ready, in the sense that the reports, even in draft form, could be placed on a web site. That way, not only would the report-writers be able to respond to the reports, the public could as well, and so in that sense, the public would be part of the process (although they would not have direct access to the shared documentary database or be able to modify the reports).
Well, that's all I have.
Greg Shenaut