My memory blurs, but I pretty clearly remember U.S. officials warning in articles that ran around 2001 or 2002 that the United States would be sending prisoners to Syria and Egypt to be tortured.

I think one obvious problem here is that the United States is torturing hundreds and hundreds of prisoners pretty much at random.

If the United States were, say, seriously mistreating 20 prisoners who had very, very obvious informational value -- example, people who appeared to be senior aides to Osama bin Laden -- some folks here might be protesting, but no one else would really care. This would fall in the "war is hell" category.

But it looks as if the United States is torturing so many prisoners of such low apparent informational value that, if the United States survives at all, eventually, a new administration is going to come in and put the CIA and other intelligence agencies under restrictions that probably will be unrealistically strict. So, the stuff the intelligence people are doing is self-destructive even from their creepy, amoral point of view.