Is the Torture Debate Kabuki Theater?

That is, is the real point of the "torture debate" to end up with a compromise where it *looks* like Bush relents on the torture issue, at the cost of Congress endorsing or protecting presently-illegal detention and eavesdropping policies?

Publius at Legal Fiction discusses.

Digby, who voiced early skepticism of the veracity of the "debate," continues, and provides a link to the "McCain Weasel Watch on Detainees."

Jack Balkin points out defects existing in both the President's bill and the one being pushed by McCain: "both bills eliminate the right of detainees to contest the legality and the conditions of their confinement through the ancient writ of habeas corpus. . . . If the McCain-Graham-Warner bill is passed in its present form, it will also undermine America's values. Because it will leave the innocent and the harmless, and those illegally abused but never brought to trial without a remedy. It will perpetrate a mockery of justice."