I’m not sure what troubles me more.

The fact that the administration can get away with attempting to justify torture, or that the American people as a whole could seemingly care less about the crimes this country's leadership is committing in the name of fighting terrorism.

We have heard repeatedly from this administration that it does not engage in torture.

For example, in November 2005, President Bush told reporters in Panama: "We do not torture and therefore we're working with Congress to make sure that as we go forward, we make it more possible to do our job."

A year later, in September 2006, Bush candidly stated to Katie Couric in an interview: "I've said to the people that we don't torture, and we don't."

And last month, Bush once again proclaimed: "This government does not torture people."

So, Bush has reminded us three times in as many years that the U.S. doesn't torture.

Apparently Cheney doesn't consider waterboarding to be torture either — though he certainly knows better — because he told a radio interviewer last year that it is "a no-brainer" to use the technique.

For those who can't figure out if waterboarding is torture or not, here are some unpleasant facts to consider:

• The technique dates back at least to the time of the Spanish Inquisition and has been used by such despicable regimes as the KGB, the Khmer Rhouge, the Gestapo, the Vietcong, the Communist North Koreans and the Burmese Junta — and now we can add to that unsavory list the Bush administration.

• Those who have personally experienced it consider it to be torture and have called it "one of the tools dictators and totalitarian regimes preferred."

• After World War II, "Japanese waterboard team members were tried for war crimes."

• Senator John McCain, who was tortured himself as a prisoner of war, considers waterboarding as "no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank."

Since Bush, Cheney, Mukasey, and other apologists for this "enhanced interrogation method" have never experienced it first-hand, it is useful to see what those who have endured it have said about this sadistic practice.

Malcolm Nance, in a very informative blog piece, wrote: "With regards to the waterboard, I want to set the record straight so the apologists can finally embrace the fact that they condone and encourage torture":

As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school's interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique....

Having been subjected to them all, I know these techniques, if in fact they are actually being used, are not dangerous when applied in training for short periods. However, when performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner — it is torture, without doubt....

On a trip to Cambodia, Nance visited what used to be the S-21 death camp in Phnom Penh, where he saw "a perfectly intact inclined waterboard," with a painting next to it depicting how the device was used. While in Cambodia, he met another person who had endured waterboarding and lived to tell about it:

On a Mekong River trip, I met a 60-year-old man, happy to be alive and a cheerful travel companion, who survived the genocide and torture … he spoke openly about it and gave me a valuable lesson: "If you want to survive, you must learn that 'walking through a low door means you have to be able to bow.'" He told his interrogators everything they wanted to know including the truth. They rarely stopped. In torture, he confessed to being a hermaphrodite, a CIA spy, a Buddhist Monk, a Catholic Bishop and the son of the king of Cambodia. He was actually just a school teacher whose crime was that he once spoke French. He remembered "the Barrel" version of waterboarding quite well. Head first until the water filled the lungs, then you talk.

Remember, Cheney told us that this is not torture, and that it's a "no-brainer."

Nance, in his experience, stated:

Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration — usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten with its use again and again.

Judging by some of the hostile comments left on Nance's blog, it seems some Americans might be reaching critical mass in spiritual blindness and utter stupidity with regard to the lessons of history. Like Bush and Cheney, whom they'd follow down to hell itself in the name of whatever cause they bundle in a "conservative wrapper," they shamelessly defend the use of this horrible method, and justify it with a "better-them-than-us" mentality.

It is difficult to fathom how so many people, in a country that was likely the freest nation ever created, and has certainly afforded the greatest material prosperity and opportunity that the world has ever known, can demonstrate such a mindset.

Nance answers that question somewhat, when he states:

Most people can not stand to watch a high intensity kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American.

Granted, most Americans who would defend this practice haven't sat in on interrogation sessions at CIA black sites around the world. But, then again, they don't have to.

All that is necessary is for them to visit their local theater or rent a DVD of the latest edition in what has become a fetish for filth in this country properly called "torture porn." Those who plunk down several dollars for a ticket and the chance to munch on popcorn can gorge themselves on such celluloid sewage as "entertainment." Therefore, it's not surprising that such mindsets manifest themselves in the blogosphere.

Nance speaks to this phenomenon: "We live at a time where Americans, completely uninformed by an incurious media and enthralled by vengeance-based fantasy television shows like '24', are actually cheering and encouraging such torture as justifiable revenge for the September 11 attacks." No surprises there, since these are the same people who couldn't muster up the moral courage to throw tea into Boston harbor because it might pollute the environment and upset the EPA.

Finally, Nance makes several unsettling points:

According to the President, [waterboarding] is not a torture, so future torturers in other countries now have an American legal basis to perform the acts. Every hostile intelligence agency and terrorist in the world will consider it a viable tool, which can be used with impunity. It has been turned into perfectly acceptable behavior for information finding.

Waterboarding will be one our future enemy's go-to techniques because we took the gloves off to brutal interrogation. Now our enemies will take the gloves off and thank us for it.

Who will complain about the new world-wide embrace of torture? America has justified it legally at the highest levels of government....

There may never again be a chance that Americans will benefit from the shield of outrage and public opinion when our future enemy uses of torture. Brutal interrogation, flash murder and extreme humiliation of American citizens, agents and members of the armed forces may now be guaranteed because we have mindlessly, but happily, broken the seal on the Pandora's box of indignity, cruelty and hatred in the name of protecting America.

The president and vice president condone and defend the use of waterboarding. Bush himself stated that "The techniques that we use have been fully disclosed to appropriate members of the United States Congress," so a sizeable number of them condone it, too. And, then there are the Americans who rationalize it with twisted logic and shameless situational ethics because "I've got a [fill-in-the-blank-relative]" "in Iraq" or "over in the Middle East."

There is one statement Nance makes that I'll politely beg to differ with. He argues that "we, as a nation, are having a crisis of honor."

I think it's much more than that.

Our nation is having a crisis of the soul.