It Takes 48 Hours To Drive Someone Into A State Of Psychosis

Between 1950 and 1962, the C.I.A. ran a research project spending over $1 billion a year to crack the code of human consciousness. They found the combination of two techniques, sensory deprivation and self-inflicted pain, were most effective at breaking an individual down. In other words, psychological torture worked much better than physical torture and studies found psychological torture to be much more devastating to the human psyche than physical torture is. The results can be found in a counterintelligence manual called Kubark; the details are in the footnotes.

This form of torture is distinctly American, but most Americans are under the impression that this is not really torture or not as severe as other forms, when the opposite is true.

What makes all of this relevant to today is the fact that Donald Rumsfeld assigned General Miller to Guantanamo to conduct further research on this method of torture and came up with a few more things to add in, such as, zeroing in on individual fears and exploiting cultural sensitivities of the prisoner. After Guantanamo, General Miller was sent to Abu Gharib to implement the enhanced CIA toture techniques.