Some years ago, I called in to Sam Seder's show on Air America Radio. The discussion was torture, the revelations of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Sam had made the point that the intelligence produced by such means was largely useless, but I felt I had to add more.
I don't have the audio, but I remember the conversation vividly. I'll paraphrase my thoughts.
“I agree that torture largely seems to produce false information, Sam, but I think that ignores the larger, more important point. We don't torture in America, or we shouldn't, anyway, because it goes against every idea we are and stand for. We don't do it because it's WRONG.
This is a country that was supposed to be founded on the best ideas of Greek and Roman democracy, of the Magna Carta, of English Common Law.
We don't have a shared religion or ethnicity here, no common thread of tribalism that unites us. What we have is the shared set of ideas that we can somehow do better, be better, here, than what came before.
I think this country could withstand another attack like 9/11. I mean, gods forbid it should happen, but we would survive it. What we cannot survive is the abandonment of our core principles and ideas, because they are what make us a nation."
I don't really have any other commentary to add. I am reading the report, and trying to decide if we have, finally, lost the last of what was the American experiment.
I have no answers.