It's a sickness

Why is it that we haven't heard (in the mainstream press anyway) the word sadism in connection with our torturing leaders? To my mind, it's the only word that explains their behavior. All the evidence (not to mention the law) weighs (and weighed) against their use of torture. When those memos were first written, when the government first started treating human beings like dirt, everyone already knew the facts. These "techniques" were illegal throughout the world, they didn't work, they put our own troops in jeopardy, they were viewed by civilized people as anathema--on and on it goes--plus they'd been getting good information by other means. Cherchez la raison, oui? Sadism is all I can think of. They got their rocks off, I think is the technical term, by knowing people were forced to submit to such "techniques" by their order. Isn't that what we assume went on, often at least, with the Nazis? These people either lived through the Second World War or had read about it, surely. Whether they knew it was torture or not is not an open question. It's hideously sick and they need treatment, although it's probably way too late for them to change.