A few conservatives say, "Um, about all that torture stuff..."

Anyway, folks like Victor Davis Hansen and (but of course) A. Sullivan have been venting before but now it gets interesting -- first, that bastion of leftist liberalism The Weekly Standard posts this (subtext: "We were only doing what Clinton was doing, JEEZ!"). A bit (the author, R. Geracht, served in the CIA of a time):

The moral issues surrounding rendition are what has caught the attention of the press and both Democratic and Republican members of Congress. One regularly hears in Washington a conjecture that rendition may have been the top of a slippery slope that led to very rough tactics at Guantanamo Bay and to Abu Ghraib's abusive antics. This view may have merit. If the CIA is rendering detainees to foreigners because of the efficacy of their aggressive interrogations, then the CIA is acknowledging the utility of heavy-handedness in counterterrorist debriefings. And the agency, by all accounts, does use harsh methods at its own facilities against members of al Qaeda. (Whether these methods constitute torture is another question.) Such a professional disposition could have seeped into intelligence units in the Pentagon that work with the agency. Military intelligence often follows Langley's custom and practice, though it hates to admit it. And once professional ethics start to crack, an implosion can occur. Yet it is entirely possible, if not probable, that military outfits came up with the Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib techniques strictly on their own.

Another, from the conclusion:

ALL OF THIS, of course, jumps over the great debate the United States has been avoiding since 9/11. Are there circumstances where the American government ought to countenance the use of torture? Moral people are often forced to weigh ideals in urgent and unforgiving circumstances. In extremis, we do certain things. Even uncompromising ethical codes based on divine authority usually recognize, however reluctantly, the doctrine of "the lesser of two evils." But the extreme case--the terrorist cell with a weapon of mass destruction in, say, New York or London--is the relatively easy one. How many lives must be threatened before "lesser evils" may legitimately be chosen? What if a terrorist suspect doesn't have information relevant to an imminent threat? Is it ever legitimate to torture a man or woman to extract information that may possibly save tens of thousands of lives in the future?

Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard tried to provoke us to think about this issue after 9/11 with his discussion of "writs of torture." If the administration had tackled the issue then and forced the country to have an open debate about the ethics of combating mass terrorism, it's likely there would have been greater clarity at the Pentagon and the CIA about what to do against whom, when. We would have less need of lawyers and of the moral camouflage, obfuscation, and cowardice that often come with top-secret classification. Our present muddle over rendition might not have arisen.

Even now, having this debate could stop us from doing--or not doing--something that our collective national conscience would later regret. The most extreme reactions usually occur when people fail to prepare themselves thoughtfully for easily foreseeable situations. One thing is certain: Our avoidance of this necessary debate is a disservice to the men and women of the CIA, the Pentagon, and the FBI who may one day be called upon to do the unspeakable if once again we feel imminently threatened.

So confronted, former waffler Jonah Goldberg caves:

Ever since I gave an off the cuff interview to Salon about extraordinary rendition I've been increasingly uncomfortable with my answers. In theory, I still don't have major objections to the "ticking-bomb" justification for torture. Nor do I have any major objections to smacking around the worst sorts of terrorists if it's deemed productive. But theory and practice are different lands and I think extraordinary rendition is torture by outsourcing and ultimately counterproductive and immoral. I've been noodling it for awhile, ever since I read Victor Davis Hanson's adamant opposition to it alongside by on-the-one-hand this and on-the-other-hand that answer. But Reuel Marc Gerecht's recent piece in the Standard turned me around officially. I doubt my change of heart will be of much interest to anybody, but I thought I should throw it out there.

Note he is still giving himself an out in terms of 'well gee, can't happen here, surely! I hope, right?'

Question is, what from here, if anything?