There is scant doubt Republicans sat at night watch the TV program, 24, assuming they were learning about effective ways of torturing people. After all, the generation of Cheney, Bush, and Rumsfeld believed humiliating and degrading prisoners was an old fashioned, God fearing way of interrogation. During the Iraq war, high ranking British military intelligence officers worried at continual American complaints that UK methods of interrogation were not of the same quality or intensity of pain as those used by the Americans. The British decision to cut back on certain interrogation procedures aroused anger among Americans. According to Lt. Colonel Ewan Duncan, “the end of hooding has far reaching implications– a growing diversion of opinion with the US” over the nature of interrogations.
Ironically, just as UK interrogators were being scolded by Americans for not being tough, basra hotel worker Baha Mousa died while being interrogated by British officers. And, we wonder why Iraqis did not always appreciate the benefits of democracy.