That may be true, but there’s an aspect of one of Brennan’s recent speeches that, if actually implemented, would have the opposite effect.

As Spencer Ackerman reported here earlier, Brennan, in his speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, declared an end to the “war on terror.”

“This is not a ‘war on terror,’” Brennan said. “We cannot let the terror prism guide how we’re going to interact and be involved in different parts of the world.”

Well, if that’s the case, then how is the Obama administration going to justify “preventive detention” of terror suspects under the laws of war?

That power to detain supposedly “dangerous” people who can’t be proven guilty in any sort of court is a power the Bush administration relied on heavily and the Obama administration continues to claim. It’s at the core of President Obama’s claim that there’s a class of people who cannot be tried in criminal court or even by military commission, yet still must be held in prison because they’re “dangerous.”  That’s all been justified legally by saying that we’re at “war,” and terror suspects are warriors in the “war on terror.”

Now that the Brennan has declared an end to that war, is the Obama administration willing to relinquish its right to detain terror suspects picked up anywhere in the world?

So far, Obama has not made clear how he intends to use this “preventive detention” authority he claims that he has, though it’s as broad a detention authority as Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey claimed over a year ago. But if Brennan really has the sway over the administration that Wheeler suggests he does, then maybe Obama will soon have to concede that the “war on terror” is over — and so is his corresponding power to seize and imprison its supposed “warriors” anywhere in the world.

Though he wouldn’t discuss the risks posed by any particular individuals, responding to Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who tried to get him to agree that terrorists could be kept safely in maximum security prisons, as they usually are, Mueller said that’s not necessarily true, because imprisoned gang leaders sometimes run their gangs from inside prisons.

“It depends on the circumstances,” Mueller said.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the ranking Republican on the committee, repeated his mantra that terrorists should not be allowed anywhere in the United States. “No good purpose is served by allowing known terrorists, who trained at terrorist training camps, to come to the U.S. and live among us,” he said. “Guantanamo Bay was never meant to be an Ellis Island.”

I know Cheney isn’t a lawyer, and neither was President George W. Bush, which is maybe why they leaned so heavily and easily on the more bizarre opinions from former Office Of Legal Counsel lawyer John Yoo and his colleagues to justify what Cheney today called “alternative” interrogation tactics — such as vicious beatings, sleep deprivation, simulated drowning, hanging, temperature extremes, food deprivation, threats against prisoners’ families, and blaring rap music 24 hours a day.

But it’s a pretty big omission to forget that when you torture people, you have a really hard time holding them accountable for anything later on. That’s true even if you create your own special court — like the U.S. military commission implemented by the Bush administration.

Remember Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged 20th hijacker on Sept. 11?  Susan Crawford, the Pentagon official responsible for charging terror suspects on behalf of the military commissions, had to withdraw the charges against him, even before he faced a military commission, because he’d been tortured — in accordance with Cheney’s policies. His confession was therefore inherently unreliable, Crawford ruled. Apparently, the government had also failed to get any other usable evidence against him.

Crawford is no liberal: she was general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense. That’s in addition to being a senior Pentagon official under George W. Bush. But unlike Cheney, she is a lawyer, and she does have some respect for the rule of law.

Cheney and his war council might have thought it wise to throw out those rules in the name of making us all safe from terrorism. But even setting aside the widely known fact that information extracted through torture is unreliable, we’re not going to be very safe when we eventually try bring to trial all those alleged terrorists we’ve been holding, and then have to let them go free because their “confessions” don’t hold up in court. Cheney’s idea that the president could create a “special” court to get around that didn’t work either, as the Supreme Court made clear in it’s Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld ruling that even a military commission has to meet certain minimum standards of fairness.

Only the most tortured logic could allow Cheney to believe that his “alternative” interrogation techniques will ever meet those minimum standards.

Update:  I added a link above to Mark Danner’s remarkable op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times describing the treatment of 14 “high-value” detainees, based on a confidential Red Cross report. For anyone who still finds it hard to believe that the U.S. really tortured prisoners, Danner’s piece is a must-read.

To overcome extremism, we must also be vigilant in upholding the values our troops defend – because there is no force in the world more powerful than the example of America. That is why I have ordered the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and will seek swift and certain justice for captured terrorists – because living our values doesn’t make us weaker, it makes us safer and it makes us stronger.  And that is why I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture.

All the right sentiments. As I noted yesterday, real trials for captured terrorists – and releasing those we captured who it turns out aren’t really terrorists after all – can’t happen soon enough.

Still, there was one big, though not surprising, omission:  while he re-iterated his pledge that America does not torture, Obama carefully left out any mention of bringing to justice those who did.

So how might that affect the new Obama administration’s plans to respond to the Bush-era war crimes? In fact, not so much. As Mark Benjamin writes in Salon today, the Obama team has so far carefully avoided any plans to prosecute Bush administration officials, reportedly planning a bipartisan investigatory commission – a sort of “truth commission,” perhaps along the lines of one proposed by Rosa Brooks or even Stuart Taylor, who first publicly raised the Bush pardon idea in the first place – as a less politically charged alternative.

That won’t satisfy those who want to see the perpetrators of illegal torture policies behind bars. But if President Bush does decide to go ahead and issue a blanket pardon for all involved, the reported Obama plan has the benefit of at least airing the truth about what happened, (and perhaps publicly humiliating the perpetrators), even if President Bush tries to use his executive power to bury it.

Then there’s a contingent that’s out of uniform and wearing neither contractor lanyards nor carrying Defense Dept. civilian badges. They’ve got beards – thick, grody ones – and tattoos, their heads covered with baseball caps, outfitted in jeans and t-shirts. In other words, they look like me, if I was less of a weakling.

Chances are they’re Special Operations Forces, the guys that go after the high-value jihadist targets and whom I’m not really supposed to write about. Interviews without a public-affairs officer are a no-no.

So I pay for my coffee and they pay for theirs — and we go our separate ways.