Human beings were contorted into classic stress positions used by the Gestapo; they had towels tied around their necks in order to smash their bodies against walls; they were denied of all sleep for up to eleven days and nights at a time; they were stuck in tiny suffocating boxes; they were waterboarded just as the victims of the Khmer Rouge were waterboarded. And through all this, Bush and Cheney had lawyers prepared to write elaborate memos saying that all of this was legal, constitutional, moral and not severe pain and suffering.

Once, we prided ourselves on being better than our enemies. It was not just idle boasting; the fact that America did not have the gulag system, did not disappear political enemies, did not torture its citizens or its enemies — these were not just signs that we were good people, but they were part of our national belief in our inherent moral superiority. Americans didn’t torture, we said, because we didn’t need to torture. We were simply right about capitalism and democracy, and only a nation afraid of the truth would need do so. While the Russians, we knew, would torture our spies as soon as look at ‘em, we knew that the best thing we could do is kill ‘em with kindness. And while things didn’t always work out exactly that way, there was more truth than not in the conceit. We didn’t condone torture. It wasn’t just wrong; it was un-American. And if it happened in some out-of-the-way conflict, or in some dark room somewhere, it wasn’t done under color of law.