We don't torture

So it follows the things we do must not be torture, right?:

-- "A former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the 'takeout' of prisoners as a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, during which a suspect was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded, sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported by plane to a secret location. A person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry, referring to cavity searches and the frequent use of suppositories during the takeout of detainees, likened the treatment to 'sodomy.' He said, 'It was used to absolutely strip the detainee of any dignity. It breaks down someone’s sense of impenetrability. The interrogation became a process not just of getting information but of utterly subordinating the detainee through humiliation.' The former C.I.A. officer confirmed that the agency frequently photographed the prisoners naked, 'because it’s demoralizing."

-- The interrogation techniques themselves -- many or most of which are presumably still approved under the President's new Executive Order -- have included:

waterboarding;

extreme sensory deprivation;

various "stress positions," such as being kept for a prolonged period in a cage, known as a "dog box," which was so small that the detainee could not stand, and being suspended from the ceiling by one's arms, the toes barely touching the ground, until the pressure on the wrists becomes exceedingly painful and the legs begin to swell painfully;

enforced, prolonged nakedness; and

hypothermia and hyperthermia.

All of these are designed either to cause extreme physical pain and suffering or, at the very least, to destroy one's sense of self and place. The aim, in short, is to reduce the detainees to a state of "learned helplessness," which "creates dread and dependency." This is not a secret -- the Administration has publicly relied on such a theory of using indefinite and secret detention and coercive techniques in order to establish a relationship of ""trust and dependency in pleading with the courts not to oversee detentions.

Update: What Digby said.