Definition of torture

[simon482]

I stand here prepared to die for my principles, while you're a coward who'd sell them out for a modicum of false safety. Who is weak minded????

you really are not worth talking to, your a liar, a cheat, a bad parent and obviously delusional with a moral superiority complex.

 

[fuji]

you really are not worth talking to, your a liar, a cheat, a bad parent and obviously delusional with a moral superiority complex.

Nope, and I note you haven't managed a single coherent argument yet, so you should give up. It's time for you to give up.

 

[simon482]

Nope, and I note you haven't managed a single coherent argument yet, so you should give up. It's time for you to give up.

i give up because you are a close minded mouthbreathing simpleton.

 

[Blue-Spheroid]

On the other hand, things like waterboarding, or solitary confinement with no windows and total darkness, while not very nice, leave no injury, marks, or real pain, so to speak.

So psychological and emotional abuse are acceptable methods of treating others? As long as there are no VISIBLE marks left, right?

 

[mandrill]

Anyone channel surf between Michael Vick and Colin Powell on Monday night? I ended up missing a chunk of the game because - goddammit - I actually LIKE Powell and I am trying hard to forget he is a republican.

But to the point in issue! IIRC, CP said that waterboarding was a response to the 9:11 mindset in the US and has since been repudiated. He mentioned that both the CIA and FBI have abandoned its use and mentioned that waterboarding only produced "poor quality information" - i.e. that people who are being tortured (or simply just horribly hurt and frightened, if waterboarding is not "torture") - will scream out any shit whatsoever that comes into their heads to stop being hurt and frightened.

So Gecko, if you want to advocate for "situational torture", looks like the US security establishment just pulled the plug in your waterboarding bathtub.

 

[seth gecko]

Sayyid Qutb: "The Islamic jihad has no relationship to modern warfare, either in its causes or in the way it is conducted."
Might be a good idea to pay attention to what your enemies are saying (and doing), lest you get caught with your pants down (and not in a pants-down-in-a-good-way situation).
Laws are reviewed & updated all the time.......address what is and is not acceptable & who is authorized to do the acceptable & when & where. If waterboarding is ruled unacceptable, maybe face-farting may be permissable under certain circumstances. If there is absolutely, positively no room at all for any action ranging from harsh interrogation techniques to more extreme measures, be absolutely clear on that as well, and be prepared to explain why good men did nothing to prevent PREVENTABLE deaths (after Rwanda & Srebenica, the list of excuses should be well practiced).
I don't think our "enemies" are inferior; they actually have some pretty significant advantages. The UK will be paying out some compensation to a few of it Gitmo-held nationals, so although they may have suffered terribly, they at least have a second chance at some normalcy in their lives. Unlike the innocent people (which includes NATO soldiers in A-stan, and soon-to-be Yemen) who get blown up by Qutb's followers. And unlike lots of other people in the world you've also suffered terribly, but never saw even a penny for it. Life's unfair that way, ain't it.
There's always possible remedies for violating ones rights, but I can't think of any remedy for getting blown up (Elmer's glue, maybe).
If you guys consider me immoral for being open to bending my principles to save innocents lives, I can live with that. BTW, I don't consider anyone immoral for sacrificing innocent lives rather than acting. Kreig ohne hass, I guess.
I'm outta this discussion......as usual, Fuji killed any intelligence this thread may have with his descent into insults & abuse.....too bad there isn't some rule against abusive or derogatory statements here on TERB to discourage that sort of behaviour (since some people are sooooo morally bound to follow the rules)........hey, waitasec......number 5!!!

 

[burt-oh-my!]

Getting back to the original post, I think a good definition of torture is any action applied to another which produces intentional physical discomfort to the other person. Marks or lack of marks is irrelevant - what's so important about the breaking of blood vessels below the skin, or the chafing of skin?

 

[fuji]

If there is absolutely, positively no room at all for any action ranging from harsh interrogation techniques to more extreme measures, be absolutely clear on that as well, and be prepared to explain why good men did nothing to prevent PREVENTABLE deaths (after Rwanda & Srebenica, the list of excuses should be well practiced).

What a load of nonsense. Torturing people would not have prevented any deaths in Rwanda nor in Srebrenica. A proper, controlled, professional military response would have. Not torture.

I dispute your claim that torture actually saves lives in any meaningful ways. It seems to me it results in increased levels of conflicts and more recruits for the enemy, leading to more loss of life.

Moreover even if it does I just flat out don't want security at that price--I am not such a coward that I am willing to sell out what this country stands for, what so many have died for, so cheaply.

I don't think our "enemies" are inferior

I think they are morally inferior.

 

[oldjones]

If 'a good man' sincerely and honestly believes on the evidence that no other course but torture—unreliable as it is—is available to prevent deaths and suffering, let him go ahead and use it. But if he is 'a good man' he'll turn himself in to face the appropriate sanctions under our laws afterwards.

Anyone trying to 'make safe' something as heinous and despicable as torture before the fact is not 'a good man' by definition.

Nor is anyone who secretly and without following the law, excuses it afterwards.

 

[Blue-Spheroid]

If 'a good man' sincerely and honestly believes on the evidence that no other course but torture—unreliable as it is—is available to prevent deaths and suffering, let him go ahead and use it.

The problem, of course, is that there are few truly "good men" at the higher power positions so the option for torture is at high risk for abuse.

 

[oldjones]

Quite so. Which is why all us 'good men' in the less-exalted levels of our society should be outraged at the possibility that our so-called leaders are considering, let alone using such barbarous methods in our names. If the people don't keep the leaders honest and true, what other justification is there for the messy inefficiency of democracy?

And how long before those 'enhanced' techniques are just SOP?

 

[Rockslinger]

If 'a good man' sincerely and honestly believes on the evidence that no other course but torture—unreliable as it is—is available to prevent deaths and suffering, let him go ahead and use it. But if he is 'a good man' he'll turn himself in to face the appropriate sanctions under our laws afterwards.

Would I break the law to save my daughter's life? Yes, in a heartbeat. Would I break the law to save Fuji's life. Absolutely not, nor would he want me to.

 

[seth gecko]

If 'a good man' sincerely and honestly believes on the evidence that no other course but torture—unreliable as it is—is available to prevent deaths and suffering, let him go ahead and use it. But if he is 'a good man' he'll turn himself in to face the appropriate sanctions under our laws afterwards.

Anyone trying to 'make safe' something as heinous and despicable as torture before the fact is not 'a good man' by definition.

Nor is anyone who secretly and without following the law, excuses it afterwards.

The problem, of course, is that there are few truly "good men" at the higher power positions so the option for torture is at high risk for abuse.

The current rules regarding warfare are dangerously outdated and need to be revised. If you understand and agree with that simple statement, you can understand the argument for revision on the policies regarding torture. If you disagree with that opening statement, you'll continue with the existing thought on torture with the standard arguments that go against it, ignoring the existing threat posed by extremism in favour of a theoretical threat.
Dershowitz understands & agrees with the first statement, and rationally follows it into the "dark side" on torture:

The Geneva Conventions are so outdated and are written so broadly that they have become a sword used by terrorists to kill civilians, rather than a shield to protect civilians from terrorists. These international laws have become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.
Following World War II, in which millions of civilians were killed by armed forces, the international community strengthened the laws designed to distinguish between legitimate military targets and off-limit noncombatants. The line in those days was clear: The military wore uniforms, were part of a nation's organized armed forces, and generally lived in military bases outside of population centers. Noncombatants, on the other hand, wore civilian clothing and lived mostly in areas distant from the battlefields.
The war by terrorists against democracies has changed all this. Terrorists who do not care about the laws of warfare target innocent noncombatants. Indeed, their goal is to maximize the number of deaths and injuries among the most vulnerable civilians, such as children, women and the elderly. They employ suicide bombers who cannot be deterred by the threat of death or imprisonment because they are brainwashed to believe that their reward awaits them in another world. They have no "return address."
The terrorist leaders -- who do not wear military uniforms -- deliberately hide among noncombatants. They have also used ambulances, women pretending to be sick or pregnant, and even children as carriers of lethal explosives.
By employing these tactics, terrorists put the democracies to difficult choices: Either allow those who plan and coordinate terrorist attacks to escape justice and continue their victimization of civilians, or attack them in their enclaves, thereby risking death or injury to the civilians they are using as human shields. Whenever a civilian is accidentally killed or an ambulance is held up at a checkpoint, the terrorist leaders, and those who support them, have exploited the post-World War II laws of warfare to condemn the democracies for violating the letter of the law. Some human rights groups, international organizations and churches have joined this chorus of condemnation, equating the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians by terrorists with the unintended consequences of trying to combat terrorism -- unintended by the democracies, but quite specifically intended, indeed provoked by, the terrorists. This only encourages more terrorism, since the terrorists receive a double benefit from their actions. First they benefit from killing "enemy" civilians. Second, they benefit from the condemnation heaped on their enemies. Human rights are thus being used to promote human wrongs.
The time has come to revisit the laws of war and to make them relevant to new realities. If their ultimate purpose was to serve as a shield to protect innocent civilians, they are failing miserably, since they are being used as a sword by terrorists who target such innocent civilians. Several changes should be considered:
· First, democracies must be legally empowered to attack terrorists who hide among civilians, so long as proportional force is employed. Civilians who are killed while being used as human shields by terrorists must be deemed the victims of the terrorists who have chosen to hide among them, rather than those of the democracies who may have fired the fatal shot.
· Second, a new category of prisoner should be recognized for captured terrorists and those who support them. They are not "prisoners of war," neither are they "ordinary criminals." They are suspected terrorists who operate outside the laws of war, and a new status should be designated for them - a status that affords them certain humanitarian rights, but does not treat them as traditional combatants.
· Third, the law must come to realize that the traditional sharp line between combatants and civilians has been replaced by a continuum of civilian-ness. At the innocent end are those who do not support terrorism in any way. In the middle are those who applaud the terrorism, encourage it, but do not actively facilitate it. At the guilty end are those who help finance it, who make martyrs of the suicide bombers, who help the terrorists hide among them, and who fail to report imminent attacks of which they are aware. The law should recognize this continuum in dealing with those who are complicit, to some degree, in terrorism.
· Fourth, the treaties against all forms of torture must begin to recognize differences in degree among varying forms of rough interrogation, ranging from trickery and humiliation, on the one hand, to lethal torture on the other. They must also recognize that any country faced with a ticking-time-bomb terrorist would resort to some forms of interrogation that are today prohibited by the treaty.
International law must recognize that democracies have been forced by the tactics of terrorists to make difficult decisions regarding life and death. The old black-and-white distinctions must be replaced by new categories, rules and approaches that strike the proper balance between preserving human rights and preventing human wrongs. For the law to work, it must be realistic and it must adapt to changing needs.
This article originally appeared in the Baltimore Sun.

Dershowitz again, (from 2006, discussing his book "Preemption")

Torture is never acceptable, but it's a reality that should be covered by rules, Alan Dershowitz says. The lawyer and Harvard Law School professor says the president should be held responsible for acts of torture and be required to sign torture warrants.
Dershowitz, whose latest book is Preemption: a Knife That Cuts Both Ways, kicks off a series of Morning Edition conversations about interrogation and torture. "I think torture will be used — and has, in fact, been used — whenever it is felt that by torturing an obviously guilty [terrorism suspect], the lives of multiple innocent people could be saved," he says. "The problem is that today, torture is being used promiscuously, and we deny we're using it."
Dershowitz says the government should acknowledge that it tortures suspects, and create rules for how torture is carried out. That would create "visibility and accountability. And that's what we lack today," he says.
What types of torture should be permitted?
"That's exactly what has to be debated," he says. "It's a very unpleasant debate."
"If the president of the United States thinks it's absolutely essential to defend the lives of thousands of people, he ought to be on the line. He ought to have to sign a torture warrant in which he says, 'I'm taking responsibility for breaking the law, for violating treaties, for doing an extraordinary act of necessity.' That's a responsibility only the president should be able to take, and only in the most extraordinary situation."
Dershowitz says the Abu Ghraib prison scandal showed that the current system doesn't work.
"Right now, we have the worst of all possible situations: We deny we're using torture, we're using it, everybody can deny they have any role in it. We can't trace it. So we punish a couple of people at Abu Ghraib ... There were low-visibility, low-level people and we used methods that no democracy should ever use and everybody says, 'Well, it wasn't my fault, it was some low-level dog handler.'"

OJ, just curious - since you brought up Semrau a few posts ago, what's your opinion of him, considering he pretty much did what you outlined in your post quoted above (not torture, but violated an outstanding & outdated law regarding conduct in war, and faced the appropriate sanctions under our laws afterwards)?
Thanks for reading, have a good evening

 

[fuji]

I am not convinced in any way shape or form that torture limits, or even mitigates the threat from extremism. In fact I'm pretty sure it worsens the threat.

 

[oldjones]

The current rules regarding warfare are dangerously outdated and need to be revised. If you understand and agree with that simple statement, you can understand the argument for revision on the policies regarding torture. If you disagree with that opening statement, you'll continue with the existing thought on torture with the standard arguments that go against it, ignoring the existing threat posed by extremism in favour of a theoretical threat.
Dershowitz understands & agrees with the first statement, and rationally follows it into the "dark side" on torture:



Dershowitz again, (from 2006, discussing his book "Preemption")


OJ, just curious - since you brought up Semrau a few posts ago, what's your opinion of him, considering he pretty much did what you outlined in your post quoted above (not torture, but violated an outstanding & outdated law regarding conduct in war, and faced the appropriate sanctions under our laws afterwards)?
Thanks for reading, have a good evening

Oh seth Dershowitz is so right! Extremism was only just invented yesterday. Good people have never before had to fight for the right against such evils as we now face. Torture, dismemeberment, disemboweling while alive, drawing and quartering, why hold back!

Semrau, from the media stuff I read, was a good officer and motivated by humane concerns. But shooting helpless wounded soldiers is not 'what we do'. We give them the same medical aid we give our own (and we don't shoot them) and that's what the conventions and our military law says. Not always practical; makes for very tough decisions very often I imagine, as does the pressure to get information that might save lives. You get promoted or assigned to such jobs because you have the ability to make tough decisions and take responsibility for them. Not because you're good at fingernail pulling, and some weasel higher in the org has told you to do it. From all I can see Semrau honourably took that responsibility and I wish him well. But the Court Martial was entirely appropriate.

When we're as extreme as our enemies will that make them our friends? Why would I have the slightest loyalty towards such butchers? Because they're my butchers?

Dershowitz's maybe. Never mine.

As for your first paragraph: You're quite right, the laws of warfare do need to be revised. Killing weapons need to be outlawed from the battlefield. Poison gas and land mines are only small first steps. Why the a priori assumption that we must make things worse? Is that really what being human is about?

 

[seth gecko]

OJ: Dershowitz takes an uncommon stand (uncommon within his peer group, at least) but understands the ground truth. Extremism is not new, nor is warfare, torture or any form of violence. No-one is suggesting the 3 D's of torture being used - those are punitive abuses rather than proactive tools that, when used properly in the proper context, can have positive effects. If you beleive in the idea of a "just" war, its not a far cry different from a "just" use of torture. Dismemberment, disembowelment, drawing & quartering are torture, no question. But sleep deprivation? Sensory stimulants (absence or excess of light, noise, etc)? Anyone who's ever gone through a SERE or R2I course experienced those treatments, and more. Uncomfortable & unpleasant, but no long-term effects. Then theres even rougher methods that may be required if theres an immediate need. There are interrogation techniques that have been documented to get positive results with no ill effects to the person, but those are positive-reinforcement, long-term type methods, and with the ticking time-bomb scenario, you won't have the time to get the actionable information.
Oh yeah, replace the ticking time-bomb with the buried IED with a pressure-plate trigger........not so outlandish, since that is a prime killer of both NATO troops and Afghan civilians. When a bomb-making cell is uncovered, there is an immediate priority to get any bombs already buried neutralized before they can kill anyone. Theres a secondary consideration to uncover other cells, source materials, etc. But saving lives is a priority. We become as extreme as our enemies when we adopt their attitudes of extreme disregard for innocent lives, IMO. Tactics are tactics, and bombs, whether buried or dropped, are a pretty inexact way of doing things. Focus the tools available at the most critical point, and with a clear definition of what, when, where & how harsh interrogation techniques may be used to deal with the problem at hand.
Theres a "hard" front to the war on terror, and a "soft" front, which is equally important. The hard front is the on-the-ground fighting, and the soft front is the legal battles; the "lawfare". Theres an excellent site: "http://www.lawfareblog.com/ , that takes a pretty good look at the legal and ethical issues involved on the soft front (also recommend the book "Unrestricted Warfare"). Don't be too quick to rule out adaptation in favour of the status quo, if adaption is a better bet for your survival.

 

[oldjones]

Essentially what you're saying is that you can be just an excusably wee bit pregnant, and I don't buy it. Torture cannot be excused in the name of justice. What I am willing to go along with, is that human life in extreme, life and death situations is far more complex than it is in lawyers' offices. The guy on the ground may have to make ugly decisions because he can't see any other choice. If he's fighting for justice we owe him the assurance that he'll be justly dealt with afterwards, when he—as we all must—has to face the consequences of his decisions and actions. Instead of legal biefs about how much water per minute we can drown a suspect with, let's put the effort into speedy, fair, and trusted justice for all.

What betrays him and us is comfortable, secure bureaucrats and politicians excusing him in advance from actually being just. There is no 'just' use of torture. Medical experiments on unwilling human subjects would qualify as 'just' under your criteria, and could easily save far more lives than find a few IEDs. Tell you what; when we've authorized those, then we can put authorizing torture on the agenda.

And let's try to stick to the topic: torture. Arguing about whether sleep deprivation is or isn't (how long: An hour? Six? Sixteen? Sixty? But not fifty-nine and a half?) gets us back to a being 'a wee tad pregnant'. Like it's OK to beat your suspect with a phone book that doesn't leave bruises, but not with fists that do. When you've counted the angels on your pinhead and want to get back on track, let me know. Officials who think they can parse it like that shouldn't be allowed to use terms like 'justice', let alone ever claim to be defending it.

You mentioned 'just' wars, as if there were such things: So in a 'just' war I can justly firebomb an entire civilian city from 10,000 feet without warning, but in an unjust one I can't set my zippo to a grass hut? It was 'unjust' for the Germans to invade Poland on false evidence but not 'unjust' for the US to invade Iraq on equally false pretences? And it was 'unjust' for Finland to resist Soviet invasion, because we were fighting their German allies and supporting the Russians? War's quite a different thing and that topic's way too broad to offer anything useful to this debate.

 

[fuji]

Don't be too quick to rule out adaptation in favour of the status quo, if adaption is a better bet for your survival.

Is there any evidence, anywhere, that we face anything like an existential threat? I haven't seen any sign of one. As I've pointed out elsewhere, terrorism claims far fewer lives than traffic accidents. It does not seem to be a threat that rises to the level of national security, not a threat of the "the Russians are coming" variety.

Rather it's got the demographic/sociological characteristics of a rise in the rate of serial killings.

Surely it's important that we deal with it--it's important to bring the Russel Williams and Osama bin Ladens of the world to justice--but to call it an "existential threat" stupendously over-states the case.

 

[seth gecko]

OJ: I beleive I've stayed on track with the question of whether sleep deprivation constitutes torture; its pretty much what the OP started this thread with. I agree that disembowelment, dismemberment and drawing & quartering are terrible practices of which nothing positive will ever come. I do NOT consider sleep deprivation in the same league. So if the first group is torture, in my books sleep deprivation isn't torture. I take it you feel that sleep deprivation is torture in the same league as the 3 D's?? There needs to be a clear definition of what practices are and are not allowed. Absolutism says that no techniques are ever allowed, while realism challenges that.
As for medical experiments - again, not in the same league, IMO. The application of harsh interrogation techniques (or "torture" if you can provide a clear definition of the acts that constitute it) may have a positive outcome: protection of innocent lives in immediate & foreseeable danger. Info must be timely and actionable. And there should also be a good chance of being successful in neutralizing the imminent threat. Medical experimentation may also have a positive outcome, but not readily applicable to any immediate threat. And finding the cure in time is pretty unlikely, unlike finding buried but unexploded IED's.
I'm not sure if you dont beleive that the theory of "just war" exists, or if that any war can ever be just. But there is a doctrine of "just" war. Like I said, if you beleive in the idea of a "just" war, its not a far cry different from a "just" use of torture. Read up on the theory of "just" war to answer the questions posed in your last paragraph. Thats if you don't beleive the theory exists.....now, if you beleive that no war is ever just, thats a slightly different thing.

Anyways, I think by now we each know where the other stands on the topic. I'm not out to change anyone's opinion (at least not anyone on this board!), and hopefully some of the reference material I've mentioned may be informative to anyone who chooses to read it. Its been interesting discussing this with you, but I'm out of here (said that before, too!).
Thanks for reading & keep well!

 

[splooge]

my wife come back after a 4 day weekend in Vegas. her pussy was unusually loose. noticing that was torture.