Giving Al Qaeda our playbook ...

Of all the sickening and stupid arguments against Obama's releasing of the torture memos and the likelihood of prosecuting those who were complicit in these war crimes is the imbecilic notion that US national security was compromised because the release of those memos "gave Al Qaeda our playbook."

First of all, ... maybe (as one "ephemeral" said) it's a good thing for the USA if Al Qaeda knows about how bad the US treats its prisoners. Isn't punishment supposed to also serve as a deterrent?

For me though, what is so monumentally stupid, childish, incoherent, insane is the idea that somehow Al Qaeda can become a more effective fighting force by knowing the USA's torture techniques. Let's leave aside that VP Dick Cheney himself gave a pretty strong indication that he supported the practice of "water-boarding." (Perhaps Cheney hates America and wants it to lose by divulging this important information?) Let's leave aside that the "School of the Americas" had its torture-textbook leaked to the media years ago. Let's leave aside that all of these practices (sleep deprivation, stress positions, humiliation, exposure to noise, lights, heat, cold, etc.,) have been known for years. Let's pretend that Al Qaeda had never heard about any of these things until Obama released the memos. How the hell does that give Al Qaeda any sort of combat edge over the forces arrayed against it?

"When are we going to put the bomb on the subway?"

"Well, we were going to wait for Friday, but now that we know that we might be forced to stand in stress positions for 12 hours while being doused with freezing cold water, we KNOW that the best time to plant the bomb is Wednesday!"

"God is great!!!"

Seriously, ... the craziness, the absurdity of this argument is becoming more evident with each passing second. Am I missing something here, or are these political and media elites really such puerile nincompoops?