A large number of Americans also believe the Earth is only a few thousand years old and insist their children are being taught their believes as 'facts' in schools.

Yes, these are also serious problems, but I'm not sure what the relevance is here.

The relevance of the GP's statement lies in three controversial-sounding assertions that are rapidly becoming irrefutable:

   1) Most people are dumbasses

   2) Often willfully so

   3) This has troubling implications for democracy, representative or otherwise

These assertions, if true, affect everything in our public and private lives, including the development and dissemination of the story at hand.

Don't take what a clown like Cheney says as gospel. Many Republicans and most Democrats take these things seriously and do not want to stoop to the level of the Taliban.

The whole idea of "America doesn't torture because we are the good guys" is a relic of the cold war.

No it isn't. We prosecuted US officers for doing the exact same thing in the Phillippine-American war, albeit not very energetically.