Some things he's said in the past:

“We should be embracing Common Article 3 and shouting it from the rooftops,” Admiral Hutson said. “They can’t try to write us out of this, because that means every two-bit dictator could do the same.”

He said it was “unbecoming for America to have people say, ‘We’re going to try to work our way around this because we find it to be inconvenient.’ ”

“If you don’t apply it when it’s inconvenient,” he said, “it’s not a rule of law.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/world/11cnd-detain.html?_r=1

Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, a former judge advocate general of the Navy who is now the president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., told the senators they would be winning a “military victory’’ if they managed to preserve habeas corpus rights for detainees.

Terrorists “want to bring us down to their level,’’ he said. “Military doctrine says you have to hold the high ground.’’

http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&tntget=2006/09/25/washington/25cnd-detain.html&tntemail0=y

“I know from the military that if you tell someone they can do a little of this for the country’s good, some people will do a lot of it for the country’s better,” Mr. Hutson said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/washington/04interrogate.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

Thanks for that video link.

I wonder if the old saying is inverse-able? …if one can just stop paying attention in order to escape the smothering outrage?...No? I thought not.

They want to give Obama the “tools he might need”?

It sounds like they want to be the tools Obama might need.

Feinstein’s already said: he may need “flexibility, she has indicated that she's willing to be “talked back” by him.

What happened to checks and balances?

“Torture was never intended to be a [benign search for the truth]. Torture was intended originally to be an effort to get false confessions...We’re trying to use it to find the truth, for Pete’s sake.-Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, 3/18/08

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNZ_Ey6SoQU at 1:50

"[...] In fact, [U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point] and the others had come to voice their concern that the show’s central political premise—that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security—was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. “I’d like them to stop,” Finnegan said of the show’s producers. “They should do a show where torture backfires.” [...]"

Read the article:

Whatever it Takes

The Politics of the Man Behind "24"

By Jane Meyer

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/02/19/070219fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all

From the “Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in US Custody” Report [Executive Summary]

“[…] The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples” acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government

solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques,

redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality,

and authorized their use against detainees.

Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority. This report is a product of the Committee’s inquiry into how those unfortunate results came about. […]”

http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2008/12/11/14/EXEC-SUMMARY-CONCLUSIONs.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

I would only add that there is a special place on my list for the press corpse [includes all media], with GG as one of the very few exceptions.

Don't know if you've seen this [I wasn't a reader here at the time].

The History Boys, by David Halberstam [published postumously in Aug.2007. It was the last thing he was working on.]

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/08/halberstam200708?printable=true&currentPage=all

I have been keeping a timeline [Torturous Timeline] of this issue. I just finished updating it with the Senate report from 12/11/08. Is there interest here in seeing this timeline?

Should I just post it here? It's quite long...