RummyBoy

Well you may be right in one way. An analogy - if the government increases top bracket of income tax it generally affects a small group of people likewise torture affects a small group.

The brunt will fall on the armed forces and American POWs should expect to receive more in the way of torture in coming years and probably this release will now forever be used as one more thing used to support those kinds of activities.

So it may have been predictable but is it a good thing? It's going to make life very difficult for US armed forces.

Here's a simple example. Bin Laden always talked about his ambition to use nuclear weapons to destroy entire cities the United States and when challenged in interviews, he always justified their use as being because the United States had already used them previously in WWII.