ThinkProgress and TPM (via the Washington Independent) both have this story up, and it seems only fair that we should have it, too:
When asked if the Obama administration’s ban on waterboarding has had serious consequences on the war against terror, [Michael] Sulick[, head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service,] answered in general terms.
"I don’t think we’ve suffered at all from an intelligence standpoint," he said, "but I don’t want to talk about [it from] a legal, moral or ethical standpoint."
(Short diary, sorry. And I have to run off soon, for a few hours.)
Here's the thing. Two things, actually. President Obama banned the CIA (the whole federal government, really) from using waterboarding and other torture techniques on his second day in office. Almost immediately, conservatives starting with Dick Cheney started screaming that he was tying the interrogators' hands and he was weakening the country's defenses and all other kinds of malarkey. Now along comes the guy in charge of making people talk, and he says, No problem.
Second thing is, Obama wasn't the first president to issue a ban. While George W. Bush vetoed a bill to outlaw waterboarding in 2008, in 2007 he did sign an executive order which in effect did the same thing.
I strongly suspect that there were a lot of internal fights over that memo, with Cheney pulling out all the stops to keep torture alive. But it' clear that Bush had had enough - and it's also clear the CIA isn't losing any sleep over having lost the right to use it.
But now here's the last and most important thing. Obama's executive order, and Bush's vaguer one, can be reversed by the next president by another executive order. With Sulick's testimony in hand, now would be a good time to put those orders into law - and, among other things, further repair the damage done to the American soul and good name.