Ferrablog

In today's Kausfiles, Kerry obsessive Mickey Kaus weighs in with these words on the torture at Abu Ghraib:

Byron York finally points out that, according to Seymour Hersh (and contrary to the convenient goo-goo win-win CW on interrogation techniques) Rumsfeld's secret torture plan worked--it produced good intelligence. That doesn't mean it was a) moral or b) smart--in the medium term it may also cause us to lose the war in Iraq (and we might have beaten back the insurgent attacks without the extra intelligence). In the long run it may create much, much more terrorism than even a successful Iraq war will prevent. But it's not nuthin'.(emphasis added)

Couldn't you say this about Mengele as well? I know the right gets it collective panties in a bunch over any comparison to the Nazi regime, but isn't the moral calculus the same? After all, Mengele and the Nazis did add some useful information to the sum total of medical research, which was "not nuthin'", but at a prohibitively abhorrent price. Yeah, Kaus uses the "doesn't mean it was moral" language, but why bring up the fact the information gleaned from the torture was "not nuthin'," unless he's trying to show there was some justification for it? Are we supposed to be happy that there was some net benefit from it? Is this how low the warbloggers have sunk to find silver linings?