Intensive vetting is not torture.
Nor is enhanced interrogation.
This is.
In his most detailed and well researched novel of the travels of Marco Polo, "The Journeyer," Gary Jennings has Kublai Khan's Royal Executioner, 'the Fondler,' explain the exquisite path he provides to death.... most slow and painful.
Torture.
4. "“Lord Marco, it is named the Death of a Thousand because it requires one thousand small pieces of silk paper, folded and tossed haphazard in a basket. Each paper bears a word or two, no more than three, signifying some part of the human body. Navel or right elbow or upper lip or left middle toe or whatever.
Of course, there are not one thousand parts to the human body—at any rate, not one thousand capable of feeling sensation, like a fingertip, say, or being caused cessation of function, like a kidney.
To be precise, there are, by the traditional Fondler’s Count, only three hundred and thirty-six such parts. So the inscribed papers are almost all in triplicate. That is to say, three hundred and thirty-two parts of the body are thrice written on separate papers, making a total of nine hundred and ninety-six. Are you following this, Lord Marco?”
...you will have noted that there are four parts of the body not inscribed thrice on the papers. Those four are written only once apiece, on the four papers remaining of the thousand. I will later explain why—if you have not guessed by then." Jenning, "The Journeyer"
Have you guessed why those four pieces of paper are....special?
