Why torture? The answer is found in six words.

"Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S"

Section head from the August 6, 1001 Presidential Daily Briefing

As soon as 9/11 started, the last administration knew that it had been warned and that it blew it.  The next eight years were spent trying to find a justification or an alibi.  Why did we need to strike at Iraq?  Because the Bush administration needed to change the whole world to cover their mistake.

When they tortured in Iraq, the WMDs gave up pride of place to the links between Al Qaieda and Iraq - or as they personalized it, Bin Laden and Saddam.  It couldn't have been  just one guy in Afghanistan (about whom they had been warned). It had to have been a global conspiracy (echoes of a "A conspiracy so vast...").

Josh Marshall said this past week:

In any case, for all the puffed up chests these folks always had a certain air of needing confirmation or perhaps better to say validation about them. The desire was intense. And now, seeing it all together, you can just see Cheney -- who was really one of these guys -- having a few of these 'high value' guys in his grasp and just not stopping the waterboarding until they admitted it was true.

That's because they were desperate.  And they were desperate because they knew they failed.  They knew the Clinton guys were right.  The reality of the what they had let happen drove them around the bend.

We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.

When you realize how desperate they were, that quote from 2002 takes on a whole new meaning.