Put yourself in the shoes of the people who were asked to interrogate al-Qaeda prisoners in 2002. One former officer told me he declined the job, not because he thought the program was wrong but because he knew it would blow up. "We all knew the political wind would change eventually," he recalled. Other officers who didn't make that cynical but correct calculation are now "broken and bewildered," says the former operative.

This is a lesson that everyone should learn. Don't do things that are only supportable in an atmosphere of fear, because sooner or later the fear will subside and the formerly fearful will use you as reaction mass to push themselves away from there own sense of guilt and self-loathing. It has always been this way, which is why not torturing is always the correct answer.