Right Ebbie. The article also says, just before the quote you give:

"After codification in the CIA's "Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation" manual in 1963, the new method was disseminated globally to police in Asia and Latin America through USAID's Office of Public Safety. Following allegations of torture by USAID's police trainees in Brazil, the US Senate closed down the office in 1975.

After it was abolished, the agency continued to disseminate its torture methods through the US Army's Mobile Training Teams, which were active in Central America during the 1980s. In 1997, the Baltimore Sun published chilling extracts of the "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual" that had been distributed to allied militaries for 20 years."

What Strick obviously isn't taken into account was the fact that the US Senate was compelled to act against the US intelligence agencies, most notably the CIA funded USAID Office of Public Safety, under Nixon's watch, because of it's excesses in Southeast Asia.

What Strick is also conveniently ignoring, is that the Clinton administration never made any attempt to publicly acknowledge or justify the use of these torture methods by our "allies", and in fact, never condoned the use of torture by any US agents, for military or intelligence purposes, much less make torture de facto US policy, which is what happened under Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II.

Republicans keep trying to paint the division in American society into a culture war. It isn't. It is a war for the heart and soul of who and what we are as the most powerful nation on earth: brutes or pragmatic idealists.

The Republicans have always chosen the former. Unfortunately, it cannot be said the Democrats have always chosen the latter. Choosing the latter has always been the province of the independent progressive left, which in this and the 2000 election, has been represented by leaders like Nader, Kucinich, and Russ Feingold of Wisconin.