If the problem with Zero Dark Thirty is that it's not an accurate presentation of the utility of torture (and we shudder at the thought that torture ought to be evaluated according to its utility), the senators could make a major push to declassify a massive report put together by Feinstein's committee into what the CIA's torture program did and didn't do.

Last week, Feinstein announced that the Senate intelligence committee she chairs finally approved a 6,000-page study into the CIA’s treatment of terrorism detainees in its custody that took almost four years to investigate. By reviewing more than "6 million pages of CIA and other records," Feinstein said, the report details how the detainees were treated, how they were interrogated, and, crucially, "the intelligence they actually provided and the accuracy — or inaccuracy — of CIA descriptions about the program." Feinstein promised "startling details" and "critical questions" about the program, promising it would "settle the debate once and for all over whether our nation should ever employ coercive interrogation techniques such as those detailed in this report." Small problem: the report is secret, so you can't read it.

So the report that could settle the debate about torture won't settle the debate about torture until the self-interested parties who've stymied accountability for torture decide it's safe to settle the debate about torture.

After an early and acrimonious decision to partially declassify key Justice Department memos authorizing the torture — for which Obama deserves praise — he's done nothing. A special prosecutor empowered by Attorney General Eric Holder ended up not indicting any CIA official who abused detainees, and didn't even consider investigating the top officials who authorized the torture in the first place. There has been even less official public reckoning with what the torture program entailed, something that would fray Obama's relationship with a CIA that implements his lethal drone program, since a former Bush administration aide described that program as amounting to "war crimes." And it's worth noting that under Obama's watch, the U.S. military placed accused Wikileaker Bradley Manning in conditions that were harsher than those for many Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Going through emails, it came out that Lt. Gen. George Flynn, superior officer, was concerned with media and not Bradley Manning’s conditions. For example, when David House and Firedoglake editor-in-chief Jane Hamsher were harassed at the gate of Quantico, Flynn was in on this incident. He was up on what the public affairs planned to say to any questions from media on the incident. But, he was not up on weekly updates coming from officers in the brig.

Lt. Gen. Flynn was upset that he read about Manning standing outside his cell naked in the New York Times. “It would be good to have leadership have heads up on these things before they’re read in the early bird!” Lt. Col Flynn wrote in an email. The “early bird” is a military synopsis of various news stories/press releases.

Also, a “forensic psychiatrist” that the Brig was consulting was a Dentist. She didn’t really have qualifications as a psychologist. She was a doctor on staff there and they went to her for assessments on Manning’s condition.

One Quantico Brig officer (female) sent email where he joked about the removal of Manning’s underwear after comments he made on March 2, 2011. Here’s a version the press pool currently believes we heard read in court:

“As Dr. Seuss would say I can wear them in a box, I can wear them with a fox, I can wear them with socks. I can wear them in the day so I say. I can’t wear them at night. My comments gave the staff a fright.”

It is Green Eggs & Ham.

Coombs asked Choike if he believed joking about the underwear was something that an officer should have done. Choike then said something to the effect that he realized this could be brought up by Manning with his attorney and it might become “another media issue.”

"Outing" is quotes because the charge is not that Kiriakou's actions resulted in a public disclosure of the name, but that through a Kevin Bacon-style chain of causation, GITMO torture victims learned the name of one of their possible torturers. Regardless, how does outing a torturer hurt the national security of the U.S.? It's like arguing that outing a Nazi guarding a concentration camp would hurt the national security of Germany.

An effectively-forced plea from John Kiriakou will be the tragic bookend to the torture narrative: Kiriakou will be going to jail, while Fletcher happily enjoys retirement in Vienna VA, safe with protection from "the most transparent administration in history."

The only person to be criminal prosecuted, and now likely jailed, as a result of the Bush-era torture regime is John Kiriakou, who refused to participate in torture, helped expose the program, and said on national television that torture was wrong.

if you torture a prisoner, you will not be held criminally liable, but if you blow the whistle on torture, you risk criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act.

Last Saturday, Munyaradzi Gwisai, a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe’s law school, was showing a group of students and activists internet videos about the tumult sweeping across North Africa when state security agents burst into his office.

The agents seized laptop computers, DVD discs, and a video projector before arresting 45 people, including Gwisai, who runs the Labor Law Center at the University of Zimbabwe. All 45 have been charged with treason -- which can carry a sentence of life imprisonment or death -- for, in essence, watching viral videos.

Over the next 72 hours, Gwisai and five others were brutally tortured, he testified on Thursday at an initial hearing.

As is true for so much of what it does, the U.S. Government routinely condemns similar acts -- the use of prolonged solitary confinement in its most extreme forms and lengthy pretrial detention -- when used by other countries.  See, for instance, the 2009 State Department Human Rights Report on Indonesia ("Officials held unruly detainees in solitary confinement for up to six days on a rice-and-water diet"); Iran ("Common methods of torture and abuse in prisons included prolonged solitary confinement with extreme sensory deprivation . . .Prison conditions were poor. Many prisoners were held in solitary confinement . . . Authorities routinely held political prisoners in solitary confinement for extended periods . . . All four [arrested bloggers] claimed authorities physically and psychologically abused them in detention, including subjecting them to prolonged periods of solitary confinement in a secret detention center without access to legal counsel or family"); Israel ("Israeli human rights organizations reported that Israeli interrogators . . .  kept prisoners in harsh conditions, including solitary confinement for long periods"); Iraq ("Individuals claimed to have been subjected to psychological and physical abuse, including . . . solitary confinement in Ashraf to discourage defections"); Yemen ("Sleep deprivation and solitary confinement were other forms of abuse reported in PSO prisons"); Central African Republic ("As of December, there were 308 inmates in Ngaragba Prison, most of whom are pretrial detainees. Several detainees had been held for seven months without appearing before a judge"); Burundi ("Human rights problems also included . . . prolonged pretrial detention").