[shostack]

"If your goal is to utterly break and dehumanize a person until they're rendered psychotic, incontinent, incapable of human interaction or ever being able to take care of themselves again, this is how you accomplish it."

Not to mention make them more pliable and potentially willing to give a false testimony just to make it end. Not that false testimonies have ever been tortured out of people by governments before.

[gumby]

Indeed: a technique mastered by the Soviets.

At the end of WWII in Europe, Churchill wanted to simply string up the captured leaders. The US pushed for trials -- and the Soviets agreed since they felt it legitimized their own show trial apparatus.

To paraphrase Pogo: we met the enemy and he was us.