How a Torture 'Truth Commission' Might Boomerang

Advocates of a "truth commission" are hoping it would not only punish architects of the U.S. policy on "enhanced interrogation" but conjure a national consensus against torture.

Such a commission might well be important as a way of getting facts out, but advocates should not assume that hearings would turn Americans against torture. Polls show that Americans already believe torture is justified in certain circumstances, and hearings may only increase that support.

Remember what happened with the Iran-Contra committee hearings in 1987. They successfully drew out the facts, showing an astonishing policy of sending arms to Islamo-fascist terrorists as ransom for American hostages.

Yet the hearings also made a national hero out of Oliver North and ended up muddying the ultimate conclusion about what went wrong. Uncertainty about whether the Reagan administration lied to Congress came to dominate (since legal prosecutions hinged on it) instead of the more obvious scandals (arms for hostages, illegal war in Central America). Reagan left office beloved.

The same might happen with a torture truth commission. We could easily get diverted by questions such as: Were the lawyers "sincere" when they crafted their dubious legal memos? Did they knowingly mislead Congress? Would we have gotten better or worse information from particular terrorists with or without torture?

And anyone in uniform who testifies about how he or she truly thought torturing the terrorists would save American lives will win over public opinion.

Death penalty opponents used to think that televising executions would turn people against it. Actually, opposition to the death penalty began to grow only after evidence accumulated that innocent people had been executed. The state-sponsored violence of the death penalty is not what moved opinion, but rather the sense of injustice -- that the wrong person might get the ultimate punishment.

For that reason if there is a truth commission it should focus on the question of who got detained and why as much as it does on torture. Americans have great tolerance for violence, but they can't abide the innocent being punished.