From this it can be inferred that the Torture Report is actually targeting Bushism and Bush's War on Terror rather than the CIA, as might first appear to be the case. That is why the Democrats have such a keen interest in releasing the report, and even question whether the CIA's cruel torture is against basic American values. The discomforting details in the reports could be used as powerful "weapons" in the Democrats' fight against the Republicans.

Obama has to be much more considered in weighing the pros and cons. If a terrorist organization were provoked into killing American hostages, the President would take most of the blame, and Obama would be taking a risk in playing the "Bushism" card while the Obama government has already hit the buffers on issues like the Ukrainian Crisis and ISIS.

What is also worthy of mention is that only 480 pages were released to the public while the whole report contains over 6,000 pages. Hence only a "partial truth" was revealed to the public – we can say it was the "truth" that the Democrats wanted the public to know.

This article is edited and translated from 《美国酷刑报告对准的是“布什主义”》 ，Source: Beijing News, author: Chen Zaitian