If Hollywood were to produce such a program, however, they’d have to write scripts that had little resemblance to the real one. Few Americans would tune in more than once to a series in which the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were read their Miranda rights, provided a comfortable cell with a copy of the Qur'an, and asked politely if they would cooperate with US Intelligence before their lawyers arrived. Americans would much prefer to watch protagonists that behaved more like 24's Jack Bauer or Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp.

We also learned from last week’s hearings that the HIG's creators never intended to use it in the United States to interrogate terrorists like the underwear bomber. Even worse, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter, and Dennis Blair weren’t even consulted by Justice Department officials when they decided to read Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights and treat him like a common criminal. Certainly, their fictional characters wouldn’t be so out of the loop.

The real thing might make for a better script if we were talking about a counterterrorism version of McHale’s Navy or Hogan’s Heroes, but we’re not talking comedy here. All this, unfortunately, is deadly serious.

President Obama apparently decided to create the HIG, not because it would be a better tool for obtaining real-time, actionable intelligence from captured terrorists, but because he wanted a clear break from the interrogation practices of the George W. Bush administration, and because he inherently didn’t trust the CIA even with Leon Panetta as its director.

Obama’s decision to limit interrogation techniques to those listed in the Army Field Manuel (FM 2-22.3) makes the HIG a non sequitur. The Army Field Manuel is written to cover the interrogation of uniformed prisoners of war from the militaries of sovereign states--not stateless illegal enemy combatants. It forbids even the mildest coercive techniques.

Indeed, the purpose of the HIG appears more intended to insure that captured terrorists are treated in such a manner as to preserve rights they don’t and shouldn’t have so they can be prosecuted in civilian courts. Even though the Obama administration has preserved the use of military tribunals for trials of terrorists who attack military targets overseas, there are no indications it would approve different interrogation techniques for use on them than it would for those tried in civilian US courts.

All this was below the radar screens of most Americans these past few months as healthcare reform and off-year elections occupied their attention. Terrorism suddenly reentered the picture on Christmas Day, and during the January 20 congressional hearings we learned how ill-prepared we are to deal with it. Those hearings likely would have been the dominant news story last week had it not been for the stunning election upset by Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

President Obama, his top policy advisors, and Democrat members of Congress will spend much time interpreting the meaning of Brown’s election beyond the fact that it killed Obamacare. They’re asking themselves, what does his election mean for Democrats in November and what does it portend for Obama’s reelection bid in 2012?

While the President and Democrats are dissecting Brown’s victory, they should take special note of what he said about how we should treat captured terrorists. He said we shouldn’t be spending millions on lawyers for them and giving them rights they don’t deserve; and he doesn’t consider waterboarding torture. Polls indicate those positions resonated as much, if not more, with Massachusetts voters as his position on healthcare reform. And if they helped elect Brown in Massachusetts, just imagine how they will help elect other Republicans in November.