'Murrica! Fuck Yeah!

I've been learning a number of fascinating things about this country of mine, the United States of America, in the wake of the release of the Senate Select Committee's Report on the CIA's "Enhanced Interrogation" program. Among them are these nuggets:

• Torture is "bad" if it's done to Americans by non-Americans, people like the Japanese, the Germans, the Chinese, or the North Koreans.
• Torture is "good" if done by Americans to anyone -- including other Americans -- as long as some horrible event or possible event can be invoked. You can, for example, say "9/11!" and then proceed to beat, drown, and anally rape anybody you happen to have in custody.
• Torture is awesome when it's done by fictional characters, like Jack Bauer. Not only is it awesome, but it always works!
• If the United States of America makes a promise, we don't have to keep it. Because freedom. So if you want to wave that "Geneva Convention" in our face, go right ahead. We don't care! And why? Because we're awesome!
• Killing American civilians is bad. Well... it's bad if somebody we don't like does it.
• Killing foreigners -- especially foreigners who don't speak our language -- is awesome and we can do it whenever we want, because... freedom! And we can do it whenever we want, as long as we say something like "9/11!" when we do it. Even if they don't happen to have anything to do with 9/11. 
• Killing innocent Americans on purpose is always bad. Always. Unless it's our own police who do the killing, of course.
• Killing innocent foreigners on purpose is always good, especially if we can say something like "Oops! Sorry! Your wedding party looked like a terrorist gathering!" after we do it, or if we can claim that there was a bad guy somewhere in the area and that's who we were really after.
• You can do whatever you want, as long as you post a picture of someone who has jumped out of the Twin Towers after the attack of 9/11. Anything.
• The only elected official who has been tortured is a total pansy because he thinks torture is bad. Total pansy.
• Elected officials who dodged service in the military because they had "other priorities" are Truly Heroic and Brave for advocating torture, for defending torture, and for saying that they'd be happy -- happy, I tell you  -- to torture again, because it was awesome! Or something.