How did the issue go from horror at any torture to what level is accceptable? Makes you wonder if the release of the photos was on purpose in order to get torture legalized. Yeah, yeah, that would mean the Bush people would have to be smarter than they seem. However…

How the Abu Ghraib images lost their power to horrify

At the time [the photos were released], we referred to Abu Ghraib as a “scandal.” The images were a searing reproach to virtually any American with a soul and a conscience.[…]

But in hindsight, Abu Ghraib wasn’t a scandal for the Bush administration. It was a coup. Because when the Senate passes the president’s detainee bill today, we will, as a country, have yet more evidence that yesterday’s disgrace is today’s ordinary, and that—with a little time and a little help from the media—we can normalize almost anything in the span of a few short years.

So, what happened between April 2004 and September 2006 that has so deadened American outrage? What has made Democratic senators who were prepared to filibuster over a judicial nomination unwilling to do so now, or even to express horror over the brutalization of enemy prisoners? Is it that in the intervening time we have made a hero out of 24’s Jack Bauer, a man who tortures so that the rest of us may walk free? Is it that if you see enough “iconic” photos of a man in a hood with electrodes, they lose their ability to turn your stomach? Or is all the legalistic jive talk—the brazen congressional hairsplitting over abuse that results in “severe” vs. “serious” vs. “extreme” pain—numbing us to the reality of what remains unconscionable conduct?