Political paralysis over torture

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Despite the 24 version of events, the Bush administration did not simply authorize traditional, bare-knuckle torture.

What it did do was develop to new heights the world's most advanced form of psychological torture, while quickly recognizing the legal dangers in doing so.

Even in the desperate days right after 9/11, the White House and Justice Department lawyers who presided over the Bush administration's new torture program were remarkably punctilious about cloaking their decisions in legalisms designed to pre-empt later prosecution.

To most Americans, whether they supported the Bush administration torture policy or opposed it, all of this seemed shocking and very new.

Not so, unfortunately. Concealed from Congress and the public, the CIA spent the previous half-century developing and propagating a sophisticated form of psychological torture meant to defy investigation, prosecution or prohibition - and so far it has proved remarkably successful on all these counts.

Even now, since many of the leading psychologists who worked to advance the CIA's torture skills have remained silent, we understand surprisingly little about the psychopathology of the program of mental torture that the Bush administration applied so globally.

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