Excuse me for chiming in, but is this a thread about the use of torture, or about the sources used?

This isn't university. People here (I speak for myself and those like me) express our prejudices and our beliefs, however well-informed or misguided. I haven't a hope in Hell of accessing any source other than Wikipedia, which serves well enough for discussions here, but I'd hate to be excluded just because my personal library is wanting

If you agree with the proposition, say so: if you don't, say that instead. Don't run down an opinion because it isn't supported by evidence of a high enough academic standing. Especially if your own point of view is similarly bereft of citations.

Otherwise I won't be able to contribute at all!

Back to the point, I believe all imperial powers have behaved inhumanly towards the people they have subjected, and the USA is no exception. I don't know enough about the Phillipines, but I do know that USA for purchased the colony from Spain $20m and then proceeded to wage war upon the Filipinos.

The White Man's Burden
or
The United States and the Philippine Islands.
Rudyard Kipling (1899)

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

I believe Kipling was pointing out that, if you want to take on an empire, you have a duty of care towards your colonial subjects rather than a right to abuse them.