The scandal of torture in the war on terror has diminished noticeably since it first erupted in 2004, when photographs of a grinning young woman, poised and posed next to a nude Iraqi detainee, entered the contemporary mediascape. Already, the discourse of alternative techniques has begun to paper over the wound of torture with a veneer of academic propriety or, at least, of logical necessity. Without more new images to fill out and, as it were, enflesh the debate about torture, widespread opposition to its continuation has lost some of its vociferousness. In the end, however haunted we may be by the image of a hooded man standing as though crucified on a box, or of a naked man on a leash, or of a scrum of stripped bodies splayed for the camera, the news photograph has a short half-life and fades quickly. The recent passage of legislation permitting some forms of coercive interrogation previously thought to be torture is evidence that the restraining force of that scandal has indeed dissipated.1 For this reason we would do well to recall, if we can, our shock at that first sighting. However, the utility of this gesture will be realized only if we acknowledge that what offended us was less the torture than the apparent enjoyment expressed in the faces of those who were its perpetrators.
