“It’s just sad. They’re not evil, psychological geniuses who just came up with this stuff. Somewhere along the way they lost their moral compass.” The LA Times provides a look at two psychologists’ role in CIA torture program.

+ Dick Cheney continued to defend the program. In an interview over the weekend, he insisted that “rectal feeding” is not torture and was done for medical reasons. Cheney is like the Ghost of Torture Past.

+ The Daily Beast: If you thought the Senate’s ‘torture report’ was shocking, imagine the prospect of the Obama administration releasing hundreds, maybe thousands of photographs depicting detainee abuse.

+ The current torture debate reminds me of Christopher Hitchens’ article on his firsthand experience with waterboarding: “I still wish that my experience were the only way in which the words ‘waterboard’ and ‘American’ could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) breath.”

+ Chris Hitchens died three years ago today. His voice is sorely missed from several of our hottest debates. Back in 2011, I wrote a piece about a day of drinking with Hitch: Hitchens Stood.