The Language of Torture

Readers around the world will wake up today to news about the release of the United States senate report on torture. It will be easy—too easy—to read secondary commentary on any of a million news sources, including this one.

But we urge you to read the document itself, which you can see in its entirety here, and form your own opinions.

Efficiency can be an unfortunate trap for the time-pressed reader and there are some things—undeniably critical things—that can not be so easily truncated into sound bytes and listicals. This astonishing report reminds us that while pictures can speak louder than words, words are fierce and unforgiving, indelible and horrifying and real. They are also capable of conjuring unthinkable images like the ones described here.