This weekend, former Vice President Cheney repeated his claim that torture “saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives.” Of those, like President Obama, who condemn torture as making America less safe, Cheney insisted, “in effect, we’re prepared to sacrifice American lives rather than run an intelligent interrogation program that would provide us the information we need to protect America.”

This evening on MSNBC, former Democratic congressman Harold Ford, Jr., adopted many of Cheney’s right-wing talking points to defend torture, saying he was “not as outraged as some are about” what happened at Guantanamo. He suggested that he even would have voted to approve torture in order to “prevent the destruction of an American city”:

FORD: You have to remember when this was occurring. This is 2002, 2003. The country was in a different place, in a different space. And if you were to say to me, as an American, put aside my partisanship, that we have an opportunity to gain information that would prevent the destruction of an American city, to prevent killings in American cities, and we have to use certain techniques, I’m one of those Americans that would have voted a certain way, Chris. And that polling said it might have been torture, but I’m not as outraged.

Watch it:

Matthews was incredulous, telling Ford, “You are veering into Cheney country here.” He said Ford’s talking point about the destruction of an American city was “Cheney talk.” “That’s what he used to justify torture,” Matthews said.

The ticking-time-bomb scenario Ford seems to invoke is simply a “red herring” that “doesn’t happen” in the real world. And according to the interrogators themselves, torturing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah — the two Cheney most frequently cites as “proof” of torture’ effectiveness — provided no actionable intelligence.

ThinkProgress released an extensive report today, Why Bush’s ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ Program Failed. Read the whole thing here, and leave your comments here.

Writers at the usual outlets are up in arms over national security adviser James Jones’ assertion yesterday that “there are a lot of things that you can do to diminish that existential threat” of Iran to Israel “by working hard towards achieving a two-state solution.”

While Jones certainly could have phrased this better and more clearly, the idea behind the policy is sound: The Palestinian issue continues to be an extremely salient issue for many in the Middle East, and the U.S.’s unquestioning support for Israeli policies a deep source of anti-American sentiment. While making progress in Israeli-Palestinian talks won’t in and of itself diminish Iran’s nuclear aspirations, it will help facilitate U.S.-led attempts to confront and contain those aspirations.

It’s quite true that hostility toward Israel in the Middle East will not simply dissipate upon the end of Israel’s occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state. Nor will anti-Americanism disappear even if the U.S. is seen as having played a major role in producing such an outcome. But I’m not aware that anyone has ever made such claims — apart from conservatives producing straw arguments against the U.S. putting “pressure” on Israel to stop doing things like bulldozing Palestinian neighborhoods to make way for new parks.

We shouldn’t be inappropriately optimistic about the prospects for changing Iran’s behavior, but neither should we simply assume that it’s hopeless. And we certainly shouldn’t credit those who insist that the behavior of the U.S. or its allies has no bearing on attempts to change the behavior of others.

Yesterday, the Washington Post published an article on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Bush-era interrogation techniques. Greg Sargent flagged two paragraphs of the story revealing that the White House intends to release a 2004 CIA report that casts serious doubt on the effectiveness of Bush’s torture program:

Government officials familiar with the CIA’s early interrogations say the most powerful evidence of apparent excesses is contained in the “top secret” May 7, 2004, inspector general report, based on more than 100 interviews, a review of the videotapes and 38,000 pages of documents. The full report remains closely held, although White House officials have told political allies that they intend to declassify it for public release when the debate quiets over last month’s release of the Justice Department’s interrogation memos. [...]

Although some useful information was produced, the report concluded that “it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks,” according to the Justice Department’s declassified summary of it.

Just yesterday, former Vice president Dick Cheney said of Bush’s “enhanced interrogation” methods, “I think it was absolutely the right thing to do. I am convinced, absolutely convinced, that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives.”

The truth of the matter — as this 2004 CIA report purportedly shows — is that “enhanced interrogation” doesn’t work. In fact, it endangers American lives and helps terrorists recruit new foot soldiers.

ThinkProgress produced an extensive report titled Why Bush’s “Enhanced Interrogation” Program Failed. The report shows that the “enhanced” techniques praised by Cheney yielded unreliable information that failed to stop attacks, mobilized insurgents, and ruined America’s moral and legal authority. Download a pdf of the full report HERE. Every time you hear a conservative repeat the canard that torture kept America safe, refer to this report as a handy rebuttal.