Plus as other instances of misconduct by the current administration has surfaced, it is less surprising, as well as “outrageous.” Given what we know now, if we just now learned about torture, we'd be offended, but would any of us be surprised?

It's immature to get too Outraged! [tm] over this — stridence or volume level doesn't constitute the degree of morality behind your position — once you're older and wiser you'll simply get more cynical. That it has exceeded your already-low expectations and assumptions about the Bush administration, well, it surprised many of us, now didn't it? Abu Ghraib alone was a warning things weren't being run 100% well.

Now to me what's truly ugly (as oppposed to immature) is that a few people actually support and cheer the torture. (such as on Town Hall)

I'm grown up, and not given to tantrums or fits. I'm disgusted, as are so many who tend to lean Republican at election time because the Dems are so typically worse.

You saw the 2006 election results. You see the current Bush approval ratings. Both are not only due to sentiments and actions of Dem and Dem-leaning voters.

Few actually support it (yes, such people exist) and fewer still are going to forget it and pretend it never happened after next January. The (obvious) point is that so many need to start to be grown-ups about this rather than expressing faux higher principles along with their apoplexy. (They just resent that Bush won two straight elections, more than anything else.)

I certainly think the hyperventilating should never have begun. So much outrage has simply been another outlet and target for Bush hatred, which always was unseemly (to be very, very kind).

It is vital to emphasize here that these matters are not obsolete matters of the distant past — something we can all agree to leave behind in the spirit of harmoniously moving forward. The torture, detention and surveillance policies in question are still the formal and official position of our government

But while those torture programs began in secret, we have gradually learned more and more about them. The more time that goes by and the more we learn — particularly if we do nothing meaningful to stop it — the more the responsibility for these policies shifts from the administration to all of us collectively.

I'm not fond of the idea of impeachment or other forms of public humiliation and punishemnt. It causes more strife and hatred than it cures.
But on this one issue, torture, I'm really tempted. It's the only effective way I can think of to wash ourselves clean for the world to see and believe.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily…

Bush and Cheney are on their way out. The home stretch is after the Dem convention and the final countdown is between the election in November and Inauguration Day. Even then, you're failures if you overdo the celebrating.

Embracing torture destroys any of our arguments about moral superiority. Torture is notoriously bad for getting good intelligence. Torture hurts our image around the world. Torture puts our troops in more danger of being tortured themselves.