The evolution of our squeamishness.

I just happened on this Ace of Spades post from 2004, at the time the Abu Ghraib photos came out, with the heading, "Flashback: When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool"

It starts with this quote:

Under the control of Richard Clarke, the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) had established a specal bin Laden unit in 1996, and by 1998 had over one hundred case officers and intelligence analysts.

"With the help of the CTC, forty terrorists from the former Yugoslavia were captured and turned over to Arab governments, usually Egypt. Egyptian security is believed to have tortured, tried, and executed many of them. In this way, al Qaeda cells were quickly smashed in Albania, Bosnia, and elsewhere."
-- Losing Bin Laden, by Richard Miniter

There seems to have been a change of attitude at the WaPo between December 2002, when the images of 9/11 were still in our minds, and May 2004, after the commencement of the Democrat primaries and the discovery by Howard Dean that there were lots of donors out there willing to underwrite an angry anti-war movement. Torture was a distasteful but accepted practice in Afghanistan, but, when the Democrats needed an issue for the next election, it became heinous.

Read the whole thing. It's quite instructive, given the indignation being expressed in stentorian tones from the opponents of the Interrogation and Treatment of Illegal Non-combatants bill. I've always thought that no treatment should be used which was likely to elicit a false confession from an innocent person, but where that point lies seems to defend on the individual. In no case, should lasting injury or intense pain be inflicted. If you can scare the guy into spilling his guts, by all means do so, but don't use twisting (literally the root of the word "torture"). Those who now seem to think that American Due Process standards apply throughout the universe, have obviously forgotten or refuse to admit the nature of the threat we face. If a Democrat wins the presidency in 2008, watch for this unpleasant business to disappear from the media once again, like the homeless problem in our cities.