Torturing terrorists is bad for your health

A patient of mine, in a fit of rage, cried out, "Two can play at this game. I'm going to torture my brother just like he has tortured me all these years. I've been terrified of him and if I don't fight back, he'll wipe me out. It's the only

way to stop him!" There was a depressed silence and he then said, "The only thing that stops me is that I know if I did this, he would just hit back even harder. It wouldn't stop him – in fact, it's exactly what he wants me to do so the game will go on forever – we'll forever be locked in battle. It's like a terminal bond. And at the end of the day I would hate myself even more than I hate him. I'd be no different than him. He'd really win then."

What my patient said encapsulates much of the dynamics of the torturer and the tortured. My patient has for my many years been terrorised by a psychopathic brother who has been intent on destroying him. He has felt helpless, frightened and trapped. He has also felt murderous.

My patient's initial impulse to hit back echoes Dick Cheney's statement only two months ago: "These are evil people. And we're not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek... If it hadn't been for what we did with respect to the... enhanced interrogation techniques for high value detainees... then we would have been attacked again."

Whether or not there is evidence for this, the battle with the terrorist factions of Al-Qaeda in the West goes on with the threat of further reprisals and an escalation of violence.

It has now become clear by the findings of the Red Cross that torture was committed under the banner of "enhanced interrogation techniques". More and more gruelling evidence is emerging of the scarring and traumatic effects of torture on its victims.

In the US, the 2001 terror attacks have led to a severe paranoid response

Far less is said about its effects on the perpetrators and those in the line of command. What emerges in many of the trials of those responsible for torture, such as the current Khmer Rouge trial in Cambodia, is an extreme level of fear that is at the root of torture. In his recent testimony, Comrade Duch, who served under Pol Pot's regime, explained: "When I was forced to supervise (the prison), I became both an actor in criminal acts and a hostage of the regime." If he did not follow orders, his own life would have been at stake.

Within the US, the fear generated by the terrorist attacks of 2001 has been overwhelming and has led to an intense paranoid response, as expressed most dramatically in Bush's declaration of a War on Terror. The once invincible nation, never before invaded, has suddenly been made to feel vulnerable and helpless in the face of an enemy from without that attacks without warning and under cover.

This has given credence to the myth of the "ticking bomb" that has influenced so much of US policy in responding to terrorism. In this scenario, there is a bomb waiting to go off and a prisoner who knows – or whom we imagine knows – the whereabouts of the bomb. The damage caused by the bomb could be immense and terrifying. The torture of the prisoner is justified because it elicits