re: #30 Obdicut

So when you cite its use, most of those who used it were not actually interested in the result; the Soviets, the Khemer Rouge, the Nazis, etc. etc., were as interested in the use of torture as cruelty as they were as a technique.

I will also stipulate and say that it is not just cruelty as a way to feed desires of a torturer, but also a way the people laying out torture policies “break” the yet-to-be-torturer into a torturer. It is a way to train entire groups of people to treat other groups of people as less than human, to reduce the relationship between them to one of total voluntary domination and involuntary submission. In the process, whole societal structures become brutalized, and more ruthless politicians have more tactical avenues with which to meet their strategic aims. Nazi Germany did not produce the Holocaust guards of the 1940s overnight.