Recent revelations about the CIA engaging in torture indicate just how far US hegemony fell during the Bush Administration. Despite the yelping dogs who crave a bloody fight, the memos prove that Cheney and his pasties repeatedly lied to the American public about engaging in torture. But YOU already knew that. To the same end, Puppet-Boy Bush may have repeated lied to the American public but his excuse may just as easily turn out to be, as with the weapons of mass destruction, that he was too gullible to know the truth, not intellectually engaged enough to demand a proper answer, or just too dumb to be trusted by Gepetto who was yanking his chain.
That said, if the best the US could do in a 7 year long war to end-all-wars, a war-like-no-other, a war-with-no-borders, was to only torture 2 combatants and then to have to resort to torturing them over 200 times just to extract whatever information was extracted, then maybe we should just give up the practice. One could almost imagine at some point Donald Rumsfeld going over the numbers and then deciding that it's just not cost-effective to torture the captives so let's continue with the bombing missions.
That said, if the best the US could do in a 7 year long war to end-all-wars, a war-like-no-other, a war-with-no-borders, was to only torture 2 combatants and then to have to resort to torturing them over 200 times just to extract whatever information was extracted, then maybe we should just give up the practice. One could almost imagine at some point Donald Rumsfeld going over the numbers and then deciding that it's just not cost-effective to torture the captives so let's continue with the bombing missions.