Waterboard Feinstein!

[seer]

Has anyone in this thread actually defined torture?

Taylor Swift CDs?

[Cow Poke]

Has anyone in this thread actually defined torture?

Here's a guy who probably SHOULD have been asked, but wasn't.....

Source: NewsMax

John Yoo, the ex-Justice Department official who drafted the so-called "torture memos" that guided the CIA in grilling terror suspects, says he would have happily testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that issued a damning report about the controversial interrogations, but was never asked.

"This committee, the [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein committee, chose not to interview anybody. They did not interview any of the government officials including myself. Didn't even call, didn't even ask me. I would've been happy to testify," Yoo said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

© Copyright Original Source

Wouldn't you think this guy should have at least been interviewed?

[Paprika]

Has anyone in this thread actually defined torture?

Another important aspect has not been characterised: why and how torture qua torture is wrong. About all here agree that it is an evil, the main disagreement pertains to whether there exist extenuating circumstances that make it acceptable. Of course, this question cannot be properly answered without a qualification the moral status of various types of torture.

However, going down this path assumes that people here are interested in anything more than unalloyed rhetoric. The signs point otherwise.

[pancreasman]

Another important aspect has not been characterised: why and how torture qua torture is wrong. About all here agree that it is an evil, the main disagreement pertains to whether there exist extenuating circumstances that make it acceptable. Of course, this question cannot be properly answered without a qualification the moral status of various types of torture.

However, going down this path assumes that people here are interested in anything more than unalloyed rhetoric. The signs point otherwise.

That might be interesting.

[Mountain Man]

What YOU say hardly matters. The research is in.

http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar...ed=0CBoQgQMwAA

Ever heard of the "hurling the elephant" fallacy?

[Mountain Man]

The issue is how the interrogator knows for sure it isn't false info. If the person being tortured is innocent, then his info will certainly be false because his only other choice is to say he's innocent which won't stop the torture.

Presumably the CIA doesn't just randomly interrogate people but focuses on those with known connections.

[Mountain Man]

Has anyone in this thread actually defined torture?

I asked about this earlier.

[seanD]

Presumably the CIA doesn't just randomly interrogate people but focuses on those with known connections.

Dude, seriously. Check out post #32. I doubt that's the case.

[seer]

I asked about this earlier.

To me torture was something that left permanent physical harm. Like cutting body parts off, or smashing a big toe with a hammer or burning flesh with a hot iron. Last night there was a retired Lt.Col on - in Afghanistan they use sleep deprivation and got a lot of good intelligence that was factual. I personally don't see that or water-boarding as torture. After all we waterboard our own Special Forces in training.

[robrecht]

To me torture was something that left permanent physical harm. Like cutting body parts off, or smashing a big toe with a hammer or burning flesh with a hot iron. Last night there was a retired Lt.Col on - in Afghanistan they use sleep deprivation and got a lot of good intelligence that was factual. I personally don't see that or water-boarding as torture. After all we waterboard our own Special Forces in training.

And would you view torture, using this definition, to be sometimes justified?

[Leonhard]

To me torture was something that left permanent physical harm. Like cutting body parts off, or smashing a big toe with a hammer or burning flesh with a hot iron. Last night there was a retired Lt.Col on - in Afghanistan they use sleep deprivation and got a lot of good intelligence that was factual.

I don't entirely disagree with this definition of torture; that it causes permanent physical damage. It sounds like special pleading in this case. For example if you sedated a person and did this we wouldn't call it torture, but simple abuse, even though permanent damage would have occurred.

I think a leaner definition would be: Torture is intentionally using methods that inflict pain and suffering on a person, without their consent and without this being the means for end of the good of that person.

So for instance by this definition clearly medical treatments aren't torture, abuse under anesthesia, and voluntary submission to pain and suffering such as self-flaggelation as seen in some penance practices, don't constitute torture.

Now some would add a further requirement, namely that the practice be an end in and of itself. So you're inflicting pain, for the sake of inflicting pain. As a punishment, say. By this added clause these interrogations wouldn't be torture, though it would be a case by case to establish that there were serious grounds to use such harsh methods.

[Leonhard]

I personally don't see that or water-boarding as torture. After all we waterboard our own Special Forces in training.

In Denmark, back when they did expose troops to torture in an attempt to prepare them for it (until studies indicated that such trials actually make soldiers less well equipped to face torture), they did things like that. My father was exposed to ice cold water injected into the eardrum by syringe (as well as 36 hours of sleep deprivation, standing up in a barn, rough treatment, periodic interrogations, etc...). Intense pain, no lasting damage or marks. This was called torture by the prior definition I posted.

Water boarding wasn't used, but I don't think there's any reason to call it anything other than torture. Certainly if it was done for its own sake it would be torture and not merely 'enhanced interrogation'.

This whole 'lets find nicer more friendly words for things' to be uncomfortable reminiscent of the Newspeak in Orwells 1984. Lets call a spade a spade. We're 'inflicting massive amounts of grief, pain and humiliation on subjects against their will'. I really don't see this as requiring anything other than the name 'torture'.

[seer]

I don't entirely disagree with this definition of torture; that it causes permanent physical damage. It sounds like special pleading in this case. For example if you sedated a person and did this we wouldn't call it torture, but simple abuse, even though permanent damage would have occurred.

I think a leaner definition would be: Torture is intentionally using methods that inflict pain and suffering on a person, without their consent and without this being the means for end of the good of that person.

So for instance by this definition clearly medical treatments aren't torture, abuse under anesthesia, and voluntary submission to pain and suffering such as self-flaggelation as seen in some penance practices, don't constitute torture.

Now some would add a further requirement, namely that the practice be an end in and of itself. So you're inflicting pain, for the sake of inflicting pain. As a punishment, say. By this added clause these interrogations wouldn't be torture, though it would be a case by case to establish that there were serious grounds to use such harsh methods.

So you wouldn't consider sleep deprivation torture, especially if the goal was to try and save lives?

[seer]

And would you view torture, using this definition, to be sometimes justified?

Not torture for torture's sake. But like the Lt. Col. said the intelligence they got did save US military lives. So I would use waterboarding or sleep deprivation. I'm not sure if the other methods would be justified - ever.

[robrecht]

Not torture for torture's sake. But like the Lt. Col. said the intelligence they got did save US military lives. So I would use waterboarding or sleep deprivation. I'm not sure if the other methods would be justified - ever.

Why not? If it (had the potential to/would) save many, many innocent lives?