Follow this link to the story about what is in the Bush torture memos that are slowly being released by the Obama administration..

When I heard that the CIA used waterboarding on just a few prisoners, I never imagined that “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month.”  They waterboarded Zubaydah 83 times in one month.

Here is a quote from the New York Times article extracted in one of the comments:

Abu Zubaydah had provided much valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsher handling produced no breakthroughs, according to one former intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case. Instead, watching his torment caused great distress to his captors, the official said.

These torturers may be walking among us.

Another commentor quoted:

From the Center for Victims of Torture’s ”Eight Lessons of Torture”:

4. Torture has a corrupting effect on the perpetrator

The relationship between the victim and the torturer is highly intimate, even if one-sided. It is filled with stress for the interrogator, balancing the job with the moral and ethical values of a person with family and friends. One way this cognitive dissonance is managed is through a group process that dehumanizes the victim. But still another way is to insure that some sort of confession is obtained to justify to the interrogator and to his superiors that pain and suffering was validly used.

This explains why it seems that the torturers must extract a confession even if they know that it will be a false one.

How much clearer can it be that the people at the highest levels who encouraged this treatment must be brought to justice?