Release the memos, all the memos

In his latest piece, the Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wonders whether Mr. Cheney is in fact right when he argues that torture works, to quote the writer.
As such, Mr. Cohen follows up with this question:
In effect, Cheney poses a hard, hard question: Is it more immoral to torture than it is to fail to prevent the deaths of thousands?
The difficulty, here , lies in the following: the torture enthusiasts have never produced any evidence that abusing detainees has in fact, prevented attacks….We are constantly told that vast and potentially massively lethal conspiracies were foiled, but are always spared the details. Let’s have them!
Mr. Cheney is now demanding that two memos , which he claims confirm his case, be released. Why Mr. Cheney needs the memos that he himself (and his colleagues in the Bush-Cheney administration) classified to discuss the attacks is not clear.
Surely he can bring up the matter without revealing state secrets, and it would certainly add to the credibility of his arguments, that torture saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives , were he to do so.
But then, why not release the two memos, but also all the other memos the secretive Bush-Cheney administration has classified over the years (eight long years) on this most important issue (and all the others) ?
We have nothing to fear from transparency…I am not sure Mr. Cheney can make the same claim…
Yet, as I have written elsewhere, the essential ethical point is not about the effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, of torture.
The torture enthusiasts are telling us that we have no other option between effectively combating terrorism, and thus losing one’s soul, that is to say, betraying every principle of justice and decency that our democratic societies are built upon; "taking the gloves off", in their expression, and betraying what and who we are, or purport to be, or failing in our mission to protect innocent life, and our democratic society.
That, affirms the writer Mark Danner, is an insidious and dangerous argument: for it holds that it is impossible to protect the country without breaking the law. It says that the professed principles of the United States, if genuinely adhered to, doom the country to defeat. It reduces our ideals and laws to a national decoration, to be discarded at the first sign of danger.

Yesterday, it was torture.
To what other expedients will we resort tomorrow when facing the next major crisis?
Can a democratic society long endure such onslaughts on its foundations, before it ceases to be one?