I hope you understand that it was a very difficult time. We were all so terrified of another attack on the country. September 11 was the worst day of my life in government, watching 3,000 Americans die.
-Condolezza Rice
I read this Wa-Po article so feel free to go back and check up on it. I admit it's more than a couple days old, but it occurs to me that this is probably the most revealing statement any member of the former administration has given the public.
I'm not a professional student of history, but I've always enjoyed the subject and read whatever I can get a hold on it. And for all it's foibles and imperfections I am newly amazed when I think of the history of the United States Government, because it has nearly solved the problem of succession over the course of its history. Teeming masses of our ancestors, citizens of the Byzantine Empire circa 1200, C.E. or the Chinese Empire circa 600 C.E., or the English War of the Roses, or any number of other locations and eras had to deal with the turbulence and danger that we have managed to avoid. For the most part; we had a particularly bloody Civil War, and it is a small comfort that we have only had one.
In any case, we Yanks figured it out, as best we could; a system that discourages coalition governments with a winner-take-all system of presidential elections, but does make the outcome decisive(usually, see Bush v. Gore, U.S. Supreme Court case, The Election of 1876, and others). More often than not a true majority of votes cast are awarded to one candidate and for my part I enjoy it when that happens, because I believe in democracy as the solution to the problem of succession.
I believe in democracy because I believe in an educated populace's ability to choose wisely their own leaders. We elect people to rule us in part because we want them to be the best of us: smart, capable, dedicated, moral people. Thankfully we aren't stupid enough to vest absolute authority in someone we only hope and expect will turn out to be those things, so we have laws, rules, treaties, and so forth. They draw lines in some places as checks on some power or other that can be prone to abuse. What's more, we generally expect our leaders to observe and respect those lines, ad most importantly, some of the brightest and most clear lines (habeas corpus, rights of free speech, etc.) should never be crossed.
And in a roundabout way, I come back to Dr. Rice. We didn't elect her but she is a product of our democratic system; she worked for the guy we elected. My point is that we should be able to trust these people to be better, because if they aren't better than the masses then why are THEY running the country? Masses can become afraid and panic and do stupid things, like order someone to simulate drowning on a man over 150 times. And when Rice began her answer to that kid's question with "well, first off, we were terrified...", I wanted to scream. If torture is a moral and a useful tool for us to employ against our enemies what does it matter if the directors of that torture are frightened?
Louis Brandeis once reminded the public that "Men feared witches and burnt women." That's exactly what happened: Al Qaeda, in essence, scored a major victory over the Bush administration by frightening them into becoming the monster that they wanted them to be. They were cowards when our nation needed bravery the most, and Dick Cheney most of all if his vehement defense of their decisions is any indication. (Update: Several posters in the comments have pretty well convinced me that the only thing Dick Cheney is afraid of is the American Justice system. Several people hinted at this to varying degrees but Crashing Vor and Jeff Boatright are probably right in the comments below. I still think fear in other players was a prime motivator for their decisions.)
We have laws against this. They broke them, and Dr. Rice has admitted why they did so: fear. Not because they wanted to do the right thing, but because they were afraid of bearded terrorists with planes. This is true as far as I'm concerned simply because she has convinced me so. I'll take a stab at something else many of them were afraid of, too: fear that their phony rationales for a war in Iraq might be exposed.
If you ask a man about Iraq over and over again while depriving him of sleep, making him sit in a tiny box, and water-boarding him occasionally, he'll say anything to try to get you to stop. He might even mention Iraq since you keep badgering him with it.
Just a thought.