Dan Froomkin, who is deputy editor and a blogger at the Nieman Watchdog  web site, has assembled a nine-part series  there about all the things we still don't know concerning torture and abuses during the Bush years. (One of the reasons we need a commission, IMO)  One of the most interesting  commentaries  to me is: Would a better prepared U.S. have used torture?  By William J. Astore.

 Astore, who is a retired Lt. Colonel in the USAF,  taught at the Air Force Academy and served as Dean of Students/Provost at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC).  He suggests that torture and abuse were not undertaken by the Bush/Cheney administration for pure Machiavellian,  ends-justify-the means reasons.  He argues instead that the U.S. did not have the personnel to elicit information in a humane (or legal) manner.  Aside from the fact that it takes months to properly train interrogators , we did not have translators who were proficient in the languages needed for these wars, i.e., Arabic, Pashto, or Dari.

 "Because we lacked the language and cultural skills to play good cop, we played bad cop as a short cut", says the author. 

 And he asks: "Is torture the last refuge of the impatient and the incompetent?  If so, how do we instill patience and competence?"

 I don't think impatience  and incompetency are the only reasons people  turn to torture, but they were present in the  Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld administration and probably contributed in their decisions, including the decision to invade Iraq and subsequently to torture.   Field agents can be steeped in culture and language so that they become competent in certain fields, and perhaps with enough training an impatient person can learn to be patient.  In other words, we can train, or instill if you prefer,  "good cops".  

 The real onus lies with the leaders, though, and they are what they are.  Their characters are formed and they are the ones who do the instilling once they are in power.  Impatience and incompetence in the leaders inevitably leads to the same in corporate body.  Although it is possible to "grow in office", there are times when a solid bedrock of character is required and nothing else will do.  The decisions about  whether  to wage war or not and  to abide by the law or not and to treat fellow humans humanely or not  are not things you grow into  nor can they be instilled in a person already in power.  These decisions are part of the foundation and if the foundation is crumbling,  the corporate body collapses with it.

So - my answer to Astore's first question is a qualified yes and for the second, a yes and no, depending. I invite you to put in your 2 cents.  Do you think it was incompetence and impatiences that led them to torture?