" We would think that IslamoFascists terrorists beheaded them! And they did. Try counting how many Zakawi has beheaded and then get back to me.
Or, better yet, think about our Air Force pilots during the First Gult War. They were beaten by Saddam's two brutal sons on a regular basis. The woman pilot was raped and probably so were the men pilots. Did you have sympathy for our guys back then? Did you speak up back then?"
I'm not sure I knew about those specific cases but I have far more sympathy for Americans, particularly Americans risking their lives to defend the American way.
My point was strategic. The world most likely thinks the same things about us when prisoners are killed in U.S. custody that we think about others who kill captured Americans. We would tremendous tactical advantage from intelligence obtained this way to compensate us for the world equating us with the other side.
Like it or not, we don't have the troops to accomplish all we want to get done in this world. 90% of situations are resolved by American influence and threat not directly by troops.
There is also the issue that as a Christian, I know that torture is wrong. Jesus was alive in barbaric times where other people used torture and never endorsed this sort of behavior.
I don't care what the world thinks. I care what Americans think.
You are assuming a symmetry of culture and belief that doesn't necessarily exist.
As an example the Japanese involved in the Bataan death march, and other guards of allied prisoners, felt that the Americans and others who had surrendered had lost all honor in doing so, rather than being killed or even killing themselves. Thus they saw the prisoners as beneath contempt. Many other Japanese felt the same, and thought the same of their own troops who had surrendered or been captured. It wouldn't have mattered a hill of beans to them how we treated those Japanese we had captured.
Add to that the fact that the Terrorists aren't really all that interested int good PR, just as long as they get some PR, and you can see that there is not a symmetry of views between the sides in this conflict, nor among the uninvolved western countries and the nominally uninvolved Islam ones.