Of course, all of this is simply for public consumption, as the CIA has a long and sordid history of "information extraction," that is to say torture, more recently of the "no touch," variety. Clinton may have ratified the United Nations’ Convention Against Torture in 1994, but since nine eleven a number of pain advocates have crawled out of the woodwork, most notably the scurrilous Alan M. Dershowitz, blot on the Harvard academic community. In fact, the contrived "war on terrorism" has provided a class of psychotics, sadists, and pathocrats with an excuse to inflict suffering.

"Despite torture’s appeal as a 'lesser evil,’ a necessary expedient in dangerous times, those who favor it ignore its recent, problematic history in America," writes historian Alfred W. McCoy. "They also seem ignorant of a perverse pathology that allows the practice of torture, once begun, to spread uncontrollably in crisis situations, destroying the legitimacy of the perpetrator nation. As past perpetrators could have told today’s pundits, torture plumbs the recesses of human consciousness, unleashing an unfathomable capacity for cruelty as well as seductive illusions of potency. Even as pundits and professors fantasized about 'limited, surgical torture,’ the Bush administration, following the President’s orders to 'kick some ass,’ was testing and disproving their theories by secretly sanctioning brutal interrogation that spread quickly from use against a few 'high target value’ Al Qaeda suspects to scores of ordinary Afghans and then hundreds of innocent Iraqis."

As the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post, tells us, "interrogators for countries that pride themselves on adhering to the rule of law, such as Britain, the United States and Israel, operate in a moral war zone. They are on the front lines in fighting terrorism, crucial for intelligence-gathering. Yet they use methods that conflict with their societies’ values," indeed with human values. Left unstated here is the fact the United States, Britain, and Israel manufacture much of what passes for "terrorism," an assertion easily evinced with a five minute Google search of "mainstream" news articles, not that we should expect the Washington Post to point out such things. As for the "rule of law," former "interrogator," Tony Lagouranis, who "served" in the 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion, used Viktor E. Frankel’s Holocaust memoir, Man’s Search for Meaning, for inspiration. Mr. Lagouranis admits a fondness for using dogs on prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

In fact, the Nazi connection is hardly a stretch, as Andrew Sullivan notes. Sullivan points out "the fact that the Bush administration’s term 'enhanced interrogation’ was coined in 1937 to describe exactly the same techniques authorized by Bush, Cheney, Tenet, and Rumsfeld. The term was coined by the Gestapo." Nazis called it "Verschärfte Vernehmung" and it was described by Heinrich Müller, chief of Geheime Staatspolizei, or the Gestapo. "It’s a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court," Sullivan continues. "The methods … are indistinguishable from those described as 'enhanced interrogation techniques’ by the president." Making reference to this memo, Sullivan tells us "the Nazis were adamant that their 'enhanced interrogation techniques’ would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner."

Sullivan’s article is worth reading in whole, as he makes an excellent case there is little difference between Nazi and neocon "interrogation," in fact in many ways the two are indistinguishable. "Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler," Sullivan concludes. "I’m not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn’t-somehow-torture—’enhanced interrogation techniques’—is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death."

Here I part ways with Mr. Sullivan. Indeed, there is a distinct and frightening "comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007," a fact pointed out on numerous occasions by no shortage of commentators. It should be an obvious comparison after reading Laurence W. Britt’s Fascism Anyone?, where he lists the "common threads" linking fascist regimes. In addition to nationalism, "supremacy of the military/avid militarism," cronyism and corruption, and control of the mass media, Britt lists "disdain for the importance of human rights" as a hallmark of fascism:

The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.

Bush’s executive order, ABC News reports, "is the White House’s first public effort to reach into the CIA’s five-year-old terror detention program, which has been in limbo since a Supreme Court decision last year called its legal foundation into question…. Officials would not provide any details on specific interrogation techniques that the CIA may use under the new order."

In other words, more of the same, although "clever … propaganda" will once again be used to get the "population… to accept these human rights abuses," not that the public is paying attention to such things, as far too many of them have bought into the patently absurd demonization of the victims, never mind, upon closer examination, we learn that most of the victims are Afghan dirt farmers and largely innocent Iraqis.