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To be clear (if I wasn't), I don't give a gnat's ass about how Hussein felt about it. I also don't particularly consider sleep deprivation to be an inexcusable form of torture (though if carried far enough it can be). As said, if that is the worst thing that happened to him then go cry me a river.
All I'm talking about are the motivations driving the people who did it. And regardless of how cosmically justified a prisoners humiliation is, prison guards doing it just because they can reflects poorly of the prison guards.
Yes, it is troubling in anybody but I would say it is particularly troubling in prison guards since they exercise complete control over other people. If "he deserves it because he's a bad person" and "it's just embarrassment and not torture" and "well, it is funny" are sufficient reason to excuse them behaving anything less than professionally (even if we can certainly understand the temptation) then this opens the door to a whole lot of behavior we rightfully condemn.
And that is why I say my response might be different if it was done in pursuit of a concrete goal. If they were pursuing a theory that Hussein was so egotistically fragile that 15 viewings of South Park would prompt him to reveal every mass grave in Iraq then that is different and should be discussed within a different framework.
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