"Regarding the Pain of Others"

From Alternet: What Does a Torturer Tell His Kids?

By Richard Thieme

A newsletter for former intelligence officers contained two requests this week from researchers. One is a Washington Post intelligence reporter who wants information about "that particular moment in a clandestine agent's life when he/she tells the children what they really do for a living."

The other request came from a social psychologist "preparing a utilitarian assessment of torture interrogation of terrorists to submit to a military ethics conference." His study is focused on institutional consequences of state-sponsored torture interrogations such as the involvement of the biomedical community. He is especially interested in "testaments to the efficacy of torture interrogation in eliciting accurate and crucial information."

I hope those researchers get together. It would be interesting to know about the moment in a torturer's life when he or she tells the kids what they do for a living." ...