That is what an anonymous author of an editorial in the Washington Post wrote today.

He notes the breakthroughs that he made by using psychological measures designed to build rapport with the detainees, up to and including getting the information used to successfully hunt down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

But that was never the norm in Iraq.

He describes a situation where sadism for its own sake is actively encouraged. It is reports of torture that bring in the foreign fighters to Iraq:

Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there’s the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.

(emphasis mine)

The answer, of course, is that Republicans don’t count American soldiers as Americans, because, after all, “they all volunteered,” so they demand torture because it makes them feel smug and superior.