In recent days, Republicans in Congress, desperate for some political traction, have for some unknown reason latched onto the idea that criticizing the Obama administration for wanting to close Guantanamo Bay is a good one. Last night on Fox News, right-wing super-hawk Bill Kristol came on board.

Kristol criticized Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) argument that detainees should be given “the same due process we give our own troops,” saying it is a political “gift” to Republicans (nevermind the fact that GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham made a similar argument the previous day). “Why not keep Guantanamo open?” Kristol asked, claiming that there is no longer any reason to close it:

KRISTOL: Literally, on substance, there is now no argument for closing Guantanamo. It is entirely symbolic. Obama has shown he symbolically would like to. The Europeans love him. They can’t love him anymore, you know. He should reverse himself.

And the Republican position should now be not just to embarrass the Democrats. Republicans should say it is a ridiculous waste of money, and a little dangerous, incidentally, to now close what has turned out to be an extremely effective, well-run facility.

Watch it:

What Kristol doesn’t understand is that symbolism actually creates substance and the Guantanamo Bay prison serves as a symbol that harms U.S. national security. Indeed, “16 highly-respected intelligence and counterterror officials” told the U.S. Supreme Court last January that holding detainees without due process provides “a powerful recruitment tool for violent extremists…and greater risk to the security of the Nation.” Other experts agree:

– Center for Strategic and International Studies: “In the view of many around the world, Guantanamo represents indefinite detention, torture, and abuse…Guantanamo does serve as a recruitment tool for al Qaeda.”

– Council on Foreign Relations expert Daniel Prieto: Gitmo has “direct effects on our counterterrorism policies, making them brittle and making the United States less safe in the world, in terms of serving as propaganda and an active recruitment tool for terrorists and really inflaming public opinion around the world.”

Even Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), whom Kristol fervently supported to become the nation’s next president, has said “Guantanamo has become a symbol around the world that is not good.”

Indeed, as the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss noted, Gitmo “remains a potent symbol of American lawlessness, and a driver of anti-American sentiment” and “raises the political costs for potential American allies and partners.” Addressing Kristol’s claim that Gitmo has been “effective,” Duss notes that it “has been a significant radicalizing force for Islamic militants” and adds, “So yes, it’s been effective — at getting American soldiers killed.”

Last night on Fox News, Bill Kristol — the most consistently and reliably wrong pundit in America — argued against closing the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay on the grounds that doing so would be “entirely symbolic.”

KRISTOL: Literally, on substance, there is now no argument for closing Guantanamo. It is entirely symbolic. Obama has shown he symbolically would like to. The Europeans love him. They can’t love him anymore, you know. He should reverse himself.

And the Republican position should now be not just to embarrass the Democrats. Republicans should say it is a ridiculous waste of money, and a little dangerous, incidentally, to now close what has turned out to be an extremely effective, well-run facility.

Watch it:

First off, the argument that some of the people held in Gitmo are just too dangerous to be held in the same facilities that have safely held the most dangerous criminals in America for decades…well, let’s just say that I wonder about the intellect of the person who finds such an argument compelling, as well as the mentality of the person who makes it.

Kristol’s dismissal of President Obama’s plan to close Gitmo as simply “symbolic” is pretty interesting. Leaving aside whether it’s true, it is evidence that, for all of his and other conservatives’ effusive praise of the Iraq “surge” for enabling them to assert with a straight face that the Iraq war has not been an utter disaster for the United States, Kristol still does not get one of the key lessons of the counterinsurgency doctrine applied in Iraq: Public relations matters. Symbols matter.

We have a rather substantial body of evidence that Gitmo has been a disaster for America’s image in the world. It’s not hard to understand why. It doesn’t take a constitutional law professor to grasp that the establishment of a U.S. detention facility in Cuba specifically for the purposes of keeping it out of reach of U.S. law was a pretty shady undertaking. Despite the fact that U.S. courts have slowly but surely rejected the Bush administration’s various rationales for it, Gitmo itself remains a potent symbol of American lawlessness, and a driver of anti-American sentiment. This has real consequences for U.S. national security. It raises the political costs for potential American allies and partners. Along with the reported abuses of detainees there and elsewhere, the detention center at Guantanamo Bay has been a significant radicalizing force for Islamic militants. So yes, it’s been effective — at getting American soldiers killed.

On the other hand, arguing for keeping it open could be good for Republicans, so…

ABC News reported last night that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was “was briefed on the use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ on terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah in September 2002,” according to a documents prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The documents appear to contradict Pelosi’s previous claims that she did not know that the Bush administration had employed the “enhanced interrogation techniques” authorized by the Office of Legal Counsel.

In a February 25 interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Pelosi explained what she knew about the Bush administration’s use of torture, saying that she had been briefed but was not told that the techniques had been used:

PELOSI: They did not brief us that these enhanced interrogations were taking place. They were talking about an array of interrogations that they might have at their disposal. … We were never told they were being used. … The inference to be drawn from what they told us was that these are things that we think could be legal. … But they never told us that they were being used.

Watch it:

Pelsoi’s spokesperson, Brendan Daly, reiterated this position yesterday, stating, “As this document shows, the speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002. The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not been used.” But in a one-sentence description of the meeting, the CIA document states the Pelosi was given a “description of enhanced interrogation techniques” that were used on Abu Zubaydah. Based on Daly’s statement, it appears that Pelosi was in fact aware that at least some of the “enhanced techniques” — though not waterboarding — had been used.

That said, in a letter accompanying the new documents, CIA Director Leon Panetta explains that it is possible that the CIA’s description of the briefing is inaccurate. Panetta explains that its report is based on the “best recollections” of those in attendance and states that the Senate Intelligence Committee, to whom they sent the report, “will have to determine whether this information is an accurate summary of what actually happened”:

While it remains unclear what Pelosi knew and when she knew it, it should not be forgotten that Pelosi did not write the memos authorizing the use of torture or carry that torture out; the Bush administration did. Further, the CIA briefed Pelosi without staff, told her their practices were legal, and forbade her from discussing the meeting with colleagues. As such, Pelosi could not work to “outlaw the practices.” Marc Ambinder notes that the only way Pelosi could have registered her objections at that time was to “walk out of the briefing, telling those CIA officials who came that what she just heard did not constitute a formal briefing.” The result? The CIA would have simply tried to re-brief her at a later date, but the Bush administration would have continued to carry out torture anyways.