The opening salvos on the partially declassified CIA Inspector General's report on detainee abuses included hair-raising anecdotes about threatening captives with power drills, guns to the head and the mock deaths of other prisoners.

Now the story is the dogs under the porch: what's beneath all those blacked-out paragraphs in the still heavily redacted, 2004 report by the spy agency's IG.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has taken to many stumps lately to proclaim that the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" saved the United States from another terrorist attack.

That leaves the question of what prevented another terrorist attack after the torture, as some call it, of terrorist suspects stopped.

With the latest attempt to resettle Guantanamo prisoners stymied in court, a group of prominent American law enforcement, military, diplomatic, judicial and religious figures is urging President Obama to appoint a non-partisan commission to study the detention, treatment, and transfer of terrorist suspects.