The New York Times…

…pretends to do investigative reporting.
Before the United States permitted a terrifying way of interrogating prisoners, government lawyers and intelligence officials assured themselves of one crucial outcome. They knew that the methods inflicted on terrorism suspects would be painful, shocking and far beyond what the country had ever accepted. But none of it, they concluded, would cause long lasting psychological harm.
Fifteen years later, it is clear they were wrong.
How the story has changed, from ‘we don’t torture,’ to ‘well maybe a little, but it yields great intelligence,’ to ‘we don’t do it in horrific ways anymore,’ to ‘we didn’t know that it would hurt.’
I will go right to the punch line, in case you don’t want to read further: all that the United States torturers needed to do to realize the certainty of ‘long-lasting psychological harm’ is to have a sit down with John McCain. Talk about someone with permanent and obvious psychological harm!
In all seriousness, you would think that VA hospitals would have thousands of records from prisoners of war, covering this general topic. Even more fundamentally, what kind of creature must you be…well, now I am getting into the longer version of the story.

This post was published at Lew Rockwell on October 11, 2016.