Pleasant? No. But we don’t go around seeking to cut other people’s head off and trick the mentally disabled into being suicide bombers to indiscriminately kill civilians:
The four memos on CIA interrogation released by the White House last week reveal a cautious and conservative Justice Department advising a CIA that cared deeply about staying within the law. Far from “green lighting” torture — or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees — the memos detail the actual techniques used and the many measures taken to ensure that interrogations did not cause severe pain or degradation….
All of these interrogation methods have been adapted from the U.S. military’s own Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (or SERE) training program, and have been used for years on thousands of American service members with the full knowledge of Congress….
The dedicated public servants at the CIA and Justice Department — who even the Obama administration has concluded should not be prosecuted — clearly cared intensely about staying within the law as well as protecting the American homeland.