I think Bush and Cheney knew the torture would yield no information

[Doctor_J]

but chose to order it anyway. Bush has been a sadist since childhood, and Justin Frank's diagnosis of sociopathy is probably accurate. Cheney is one of the most evil, soulless men on Earth. I think that being able to implement the suffering of other people was something that made them feel like big men.

[movonne]

1. Of course they knew... cheney is a sadist....

[yardwork]

2. Naomi Klein talks about the real purpose of torture in her book The Shock Doctrine.

Her idea is that people have to be "shocked" into accepting the corporate takeover of their countries. (Remember "Shock and Awe?") Natural disasters will do it. In their absence, unnatural disasters have to be arranged, and these involve torture - literal shocks that terrify people into compliance.

Why were children and women raped and tortured in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, and other U.S. run prisons? To horrify the population into going along with U.S. occupation that allowed Shell Oil back into Iraq.

The purpose of torture is always to terrorize people in order to gain control over them.

[madeline_con]

3. Maybe Uncle Dick read her book to Chimp Boy.

When they stopped drooling, they started making phone calls. :puke:

[yardwork]

4. They were already well into it when her book came out. W probably read his daddy's CIA handbooks.

The CIA and State Department started using torture to take over countries in the 1960s. We practiced in Vietnam, honed our skills in Latin America, and unleashed them in the middle east and at home.