I think his point is when YOU are waterboarding people, why would you even bother breaking ties with other countries that also waterboard people? Aside from as part of an elaborate ploy to pretend you don't?

Speaking in general, the "big deal" of criminal/immoral behavior is in the extent of it, and in the borders it crosses, specifically referring to acts that everyone does.

Everyone does (at least) minor law breakages during life, but that doesn't mean that if somebody, say, evades taxes for millions of dollars is not a big deal just because everybody does that for a few hundred bucks.

Some activies, for example torture and mass surveillance, are definitely crossing moral borders - at the very least, the way have been applied (and this is quite a generous statement).

You seem to be ignoring China, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and several other powerful nations in your assertion that the US is the only credible power player on the world stage. The biggest, perhaps, but certainly not the only one - and not the only one taking advantage of American military and intelligence assets because they find it in their own political interests to do so.

Sadly enough, booting out democratically elected leaders in other countries just counts as business as usual. (The USSR played the same game, back when it existed and had the clout for that.)

They're both bad, but they're not comparable.

And Texas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Annexation