As is usually the case, that fish rotted from the head down.

There wasn't enough support in Congress or among the general public to impeach Bush and Cheney. There won't be public or congressional support for any kind of legal proceedings against Bush and Cheney and Rummy and the others who authorized and pushed the use of torture.

Those who actually carried out the orders are guilty of serious crimes, no question about it. But what sense would it make to punish the ones who carried out the orders while letting the ones who gave the orders go free? The person who poured the water down a prisoner's nose and throat goes to prison, and the people who initiated and authorized the torture go on book tours?

The underlying problem is that too many people were convinced that they needed to celebrate torture, or at least look the other way, because they were told that if they didn't they'd be attacked by terrorists. So you have the likes of Rush Limbaugh making fun of what was happening in Abu Ghraib and you have wingnut freepers celebrating torture, but also a lot of other non-wingnuts scared enough to look the other way.

That attitude is not going to reverse itself overnight. The next attack, whenever that happens, may be enough to convince people, at least on some gut level, that they were safer when Bush was starting preemptive wars and locking people up without trial and torturing prisoners and getting wiretaps without enough evidence to justify a warrant and so on and so on. I hope not, but it's easier to imagine that than to imagine that the public would reject the cowardly right-wing insistence on sacrificing liberty for a false sense of security, and find the bravery to reclaim those things that Bush/Cheney trashed.