The Bush administration's simplistic approach to national security was to show that they were the biggest, meanest bastards on the planet. Part of that is to create the impression that there is no rhyme or reason for our violence other than a demonstration that we have the power to do it. The inexplicability of it is the point. And to that end, all those creepy rituals with the prisoners in the orange jumpsuits and the goggles on their knees were designed to show that the United States was engaged in a form of bureaucratic, systematic sadism. Which it clearly was.
Interrogations for the purpose of gaining intelligence were never the point. The point was to create terror. And there's a word for that.
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