In my recent travels, I went to a museum of the Inquisition, formally the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, which included an exhibit on their "enhanced interrogation techniques." It of course contained exhibits on waterboarding and other barbaric practices which the fine people in our government have brought back for kicks and giggles.
Flippancy aside, when we did it, as when they did it, the point wasn't kicks and giggles... it was to get people to say whatever the torturers wanted them to say. It's a bit comical years later to imagine that that they felt they needed to torture the shit out of people to find some justification for the Iraq war. Telling them to "suck on this" was a good enough reason for our elite pundits then, and it was a good enough reason when the claimed reason for most of them - ZOMG BALSA DRONES OF DEATH - turned out not to be true.
