I suspect that one effect of 24 has been to encourage the American Public to see torture as part of the American Way, and as OK, so long as it's done by the Right People.

"It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it" is the line, and an awful lot of people buy it. Very much the same as that laid out by Himmler talking to the SS: "To have gone through this and yet - apart from a few exceptions, examples of human weakness - to have remained decent fellows, this is what has made us hard. This is a glorious page in our history that has never been written and shall never be written."