Given the choice . . . Repubs prefer lies

Maybe it's just human nature, or maybe the human nature of Republicans is just different from the rest of us.

Given the choice between believing misinformation that echoes their failed political ideology and information that is objectively demonstrated to be true -- there's no contest. Republicans, at least the variety that seem to control the GOP today, will choose the former. Prime example: trickle down economics: believing against evidence that cutting taxes for the wealthy is the answer to every economic problem.

And Condi Rice will believe until her dying day that Sadaam Hussein was a threat to the U.S. She said, through gritted teeth in a recent interview, anyone who denies it is just not facing reality. Yeah? You mean like the missing WMD? That reality, Condi? Or do you really mean that they had some oil we could use?

The latest case in point: Osama bin Laden's body had hardly reached the bottom of the sea when the Bushies revived the old argument about whether torture works. Someone said that some small bit of information was maybe obtained from one detainee under "harsh" interrogation eight years ago. Now, it turns out that he did maybe sort of hint at the identity of one of bin Laden's curriers. Voila !! Rumsfeld claims vindication for torture. See !! We got info that led us directly to Osama.

Not so, is the counter claim, discussed on HuffPost by Dan Froomkin. In fact, torture may actually have prolonged the hunt. Citing what an Air Force interrogator said in 2006:

"I think that without a doubt, torture and enhanced interrogation techniques slowed down the hunt for bin Laden." . . .

It now appears likely that several detainees had information about a key al Qaeda courier -- information that might have led authorities directly to bin Laden years ago. But subjected to physical and psychological brutality,

"they gave us the bare minimum amount of information they could get away with to get the pain to stop, or to mislead us."

It seems that one detainee gave a nickname for a courier, and it's not clear that he gave it up during torture; while two others who were most harshly tortured -- one was waterboarded 183 times -- continued to deny knowing him. So it was 2 against 1, and it was the ones who got the worst treatment who kept denying any knowledge of the courier.

Froomkin then quotes from a 2006 study by the National Defense Intelligence College, where

"trained interrogators found that traditional, rapport-based interviewing approaches are extremely effective with even the most hardened detainees, whereas coercion consistently builds resistance and resentment."

Another military intelligence officer with extensive experience has studied interrogation techniques. He said:

"By making a detainee less likely to provide information, and making the information he does provide harder to evaluate, they hindered what we needed to accomplish."

Liz Cheney, John Yoo, and Donald Rumsfeld all claimed vindication for the Bush team's methods. But answer me this, folks: If you guys got the info through torture, how come you didn't catch bin Laden? You had six years with this information.

Bush could have had bin Laden's beard to add to Sadaam's gun in his trophy room.

Obama's press secretary Jay Carney pushed back:

"It simply strains credulity to suggest that a piece of information that may or may not have been gathered eight years ago somehow directly led to a successful mission on Sunday. That's just not the case."

In 2012 the choice will be up to the American people as to which team they want to run the show. I vote for the more honest one -- which happens to be the one that actually did capture bin Laden -- and the one that respects experience and evidence-based policy over blind allegiance to ideology and fixed ideas.

Ralph