European v American View on Figthing Terrorism.

The New York Times has a good grasp of the widening gap between the Europeans (including public opinion) and the US administration (but not public opinion):

In the view of the Bush administration and its supporters, the Europeans' moral fastidiousness reflects a lack of realism about the nature of the terrorist threat and what needs to be done to defeat it.
The view of Europeans, by contrast, is that they understand the terrorist threat perfectly well, but that the Bush administration's flouting of democratic standards and international law incites more terrorism, not less.

The current US administration is giving a lot of credibility to anti-American views and they make the US look like the Big Bad Wolf or more often just a bully. The scary part is that as long as this administration is in power, the word of the United-States will be absolutely worthless - who can believe them when they say they obey international law? They haven't so many times in the last few years - the war in Iraq being the most obvious case.So Ms Rice can deny all she wants, nobody is really listening.
The Europeans may lack realism at times but they're not THAT stupid either. Even if it were true that Europeans are too naive as some Neo-cons have suggested, saying it can only make the US look condecending at best.
Even in the US, the question of torture has cause a heated debate so why would the Europeans just shut up about it? The Europeans are no less naive than Senator McCain - it is not (just) a human rights issue, it is the fact that torture simply does not work .