Of All the Appalling Things....

I have to agree with Thomas E. Waits on this one:

A friend recently asked me what I really had learned since 9/11, how my sense of the world had changed. That event and its consequences have so dominated my life for the last 10 years that it took me a minute to consider, and I was surprised at my response. I told him that I never expected to live in a country whose government officially embraced torture....

Torture and other abuse of people under American control was more than a crime; it was a strategic blunder: You can't win a war by undermining your own values, the things your country stands for.