> I don't think this is a fair description of all these people who are
> excusing the mayhem and torture in Iraq. It's not that they are
> incapable of self-reflection and base their ideas on misconceptions.
> Rather, like Jon mentioned, they are trying to resolve cognitive
> dissonance: "The U.S. is a beacon of freedom and democracy" idea
> is inconsistent with the torture reports,
Well, the torturing itself might be inconsistent with the idea (I'd say it reflects very poorly on the scruples of the intelligence community and the sadism of many individual soldiers), however, the "torture reports" are entirely consistent: if the US wasn't both somewhat free and democratic, we probably wouldn't know about the torture.
-- Luke