Among the many "enhanced interrogation methods" (a.k.a physical and psychological acts of torture) that CIA personnel and independent contractors used on the men they designated as Muslim terrorists and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay and "black" sites around the world was "rectal feeding."

The Daily Beast’s Russell Saunders points out how this horrific act of violence has no medical or nutritional value: 

Even if one accepts the highly dubious notion that anyone believed "rectal feedings" were a legitimate means of nourishing someone, there was no reason to consider such extreme measures in the first place. The rule of thumb in medicine is "if the guts works, use it," meaning that it’s best to use the stomach to hydrate a patient if it’s functioning properly. There is no indication that these detainees couldn’t have had tubes inserted into their stomachs through their noses for the purposes of feeding them, assuming that respecting their right to refuse food had already been thrown out the window. For hydration, an IV would have been effective, as CIA medical officers conceded.

In other words, it’s a sickening, humiliating twist on the already-painful force-feeding of imprisoned people through their noses.