American Torture

Hardly.

The case against the US for its running of, and what it has done at Guantanmo; the practise of "Extraordinary rendition" flights, and the at best connivance and at worst active participation in by various democratic western countries; the war crimes committed at the likes of Abu Ghraib; the "executions" almost certainly carried out by the special forces - and non-special forces - of various countries in Afghanistan (and elsewhere); are shameful, are crimes against humanity, and are a big reminder that whatever your moral reason and justification for intervening with military force, far far too often results in outcomes you would not want to be associated with. 

I would say that the Bush administration's role in justifying "enhanced interrogation" is pretty damning.

Nonetheless, if you take the viewpoint I've espoused above, you have to also accept that will sometimes mean that some very bad people will do some very bad s**t that they might have otherwise been prevented from doing. Even if you think that on the whole the application of torture will in the vast majority of cases result in c*** intelligence (leaving aside all the moral aspects stuff).

So taking the view that as western democracies we should be maintaining the moral/ethical high ground, needs to also preclude one from employing retrospective 20:20 vision to ask "why didn't we do X to 'pressurise' to get the intel". 

Or to borrow one of the classic moral dilemmas: if you know, or even only have reasonable grounds for believing,that someone has for example placed a major weapon (dirty nuclear ? powerful classic bomb ? biological weapon) so that it will kill many many people - school kids ? - are you justified in using torture in order to prevent ? If you can't be sure of your answer to that, then be careful in applying retrospective judgement to the decisions that others made without the benefit of hindsight.

EDIT: PS I'm impressed by a) the fact that those officers have openly come out with the statement that they have b) it is actually a very good indication that societies which overall have a good set of both institutional moral guidance and legal frameworks, embedding democratic respects for the individual over the state, will actually ultimately result in the right stuff happening, even if late. Is anyone really under any illusion that such a judgement could be made - and made public - by a similar panel, happening in e.g. Russia Uhh, no.