“Our servicemen will suffer for years”

When we talk aobut torture it seems to me we often omit one of the results of torture. 

We didn’t use to torture partially because it’s (simply?) wrong for the leadership of a nation to embrace torture, and  partially because it’s fruitless anyway – repeated sources have shown anyone will say anything when tortured. 

But another reason that seems to be lost is that it is a bad policy to torture because we don’t want our sons & daughters subjected to the same treatment.  If the USA is not willing to abide by international rules, why should anyone else?  Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rover, and their supporters have authorized the use of torture not just for the USA, but for the entire world.  

“We have re-created our enemy’s methodologies in Guantanamo,” Malcolm Nance, former head of the Navy’s SERE training program, says in “Torturing Democracy.” He adds, “It will hurt us for decades to come. Decades. Our people will all be subjected to these tactics, because we have authorized them for the world now. How it got to Guantanamo is a crime and somebody needs to figure out who did it, how they did it, who authorized them to do it … Because our servicemen will suffer for years.”

Why Everyone should see “Torturing Democracy”: http://www.truthout.org/053009Z 

I know how it happened: By Bush/Cheney hiring and appointing gutless, spineless, sheep to important positions.  We know who authorized it:  President George W. Bush…who inn turn pointed both to the votes marked “Republican” and to Jesus as authorization.  “God is on our side”.  And, Rumsfeld’s wartime reports were submitted with bible verses on the the cover.  If this was anyone oversees, we would have said that was a country led by religious fanatics – and we would have been right.

When I was a child learning about America and world history, the countries whose leaders tortured prisoners  were always the bad guys.   For the new generation, does the last 8 years inspire pride in America?  Does this make us the bad guys?  Does torturing prisoners (be it on US soil, at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, or secret prisons), does it really lead to less people signing up to be terrorists?