Why did they torture Jose Padilla using solitary confinement and sensory deprivation as they did? One gets the sense that the Bush Adminstration wanted purely to establish to the public that it could destroy a human being, and that it would indeed do so at its own pleasure. In short, these are men who get sadistic pleasure at wielding extreme power over others. They are sadists, short and simple.
This is an old phenomena. The extremely powerful often have liked to push the limits of establishing the ultimate degradation and destruction of the powerless that they hold in their control. Thye like to gloat and laugh over it. There is no further goal than that. Irresponsible power and sadism most often go hand in hand.
See the Christian Science Monitor about how they ‘broke down’ Jose Padilla
