Andrew Sullivan seems surprised that Americans don’t seem outraged by the harrassment of terrorists at Gitmo. 

Emails are running overwhelmingly in favor of
the “abusive and degrading” treatment of detainees, as cited in the
Schmidt report. And they are in favor of narrowing the definition of
torture to the extremes that the Bush administration has done.
I fear this is the popular view. America is not the America it once was.

In a similar vein, Glenn Reynolds, says, “I think the threat is real, but I don’t think that torture is the way to deal with it.” More partisan types
have been saying that everything from putting a bra on a terrorist’s
head to calling them dirty names qualifies as torture. But for all this
sturm and drang over the past year, polls continue to show the public giving a big ho-hum to the whole Gitmo-torture issue.

I’m not surprised. If you’ve ever seen the movies “Guarding
Tess” and “Patriot Games” in a theater, you know what the average
American feels about torture. In “Guarding Tess” Nicholas Cage’s Secret
Service character blows the toe off a chauffeur to find out where
Shirley MacLaine, playing a former First Lady, has been buried alive.
In “Patriot Games” Harrison Ford shoots the kneecap of an IRA spy to
get some crucial information. In neither case did I see a mass exodus
from the theater. In fact, I seem to remember applause in both cases.

Most Americans seem know that sometimes you have to do what you have do.