When I read that the news was considering torture as "harsh" I was appalled. Hard water is harsh, hard soap is harsh, swearing, grounded for a week is harsh.. Torture is cruel, life threatening, psychologically, spiritually and emotionally damaging. The rationale for torture is ALWAYS psycho-pathological and is encouraged by such and by sociopaths.
I have interviewed murders (while in the Military) they are generally lucid, chatty, often well read and the last person you would see as murder. (Heck, Ted Bundy was a Republican who attend the national convention in the past.)
It is a mental condition of the utmost depersonalization of seeing other humans as animals.
Some of the troops who have conducted these tortures are damaged for life...as damaged as those that were tortured...if they are not damaged by willful cruelty, then they are pathologically demented and are to be feared as any animal that would torture and kill for the sheer joy of torturing and killing.
Torture is never excusable and is a war crime under the Geneva convention which our country signed and prosecuted Nazis for violating..