For the last one hundred years or so US policy has been to either look the other way as allies tortured thousands or trained people in the actual techniques, particularly in Latin America. After 9/11 the Pentagon as an agent of the White House said the US military needed to bring back torture (as if they had ever stopped) because the new enemy was brutal and lives were at stake particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq. Abu Ghraib brought the issue to the public but in the end the President and his allies said that people like Lyndie England should take the fall not the people who were actually in charge and gave the orders like Bush, Rumsfeld and the military high command.
A fairly extra-ordinary debate occured yesterday on whether the US government should condone the use of torture. The Bush administration is for it and is threatening a veto. Alan Dershowitz thinks it's a good idea, Ted Stevens said, I paraphrase, their doing it so so should we, they're bad. I think this was a decent vote, I don't think it will stop the US from torturing people because war and empire require it but it sends a decent message.
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