The most haunting image from Abu Ghraib is that of ‘hooded man,’ standing on a box with his arms outstretched, with electrical wires hanging from his hands. The victim is compelled to maintain his balance on the narrow box, with his vision cut off. He cannot see that the wires on his hands are attached to nothing.

The wires address a problem that torturers encounter in using this method, that of compelling a victim to hold the posture, which produces severe muscular pain within fifteen minutes, and then becomes agonizing. The man under the hood is told that he is rigged to an electrical service in such a way that dropping his arms, or stepping down from the box, will cause him to be electrocuted.

In signing the memo of authorization for postural tortures, Donald Rumsfeld remarked that the four-hour limitation on this practice seemed lenient. To ease his chronic back pain, Rumsfeld used a standing desk, and pointed out in the margin of the memo that he himself was accustomed to standing eight to ten hours a day. Rumsfeld realized that he was himself free to move about, to drop his arms, to lean on the desk, and that the torture he was authorizing consisted precisely in the prisoner being forbidden to do any of these things. Rumsfeld's flippant remark caught attention, as his authorization passed down the chain of command, potentially signaling that the four-hour limitation could be set aside.