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Defining Torture Down
Reading the OLC torture memos is enough to make you ill. The techniques in question are plainly and instinctively abhorrent by any common sense definition, and the authors of the memos obviously know it. But somehow they have to conclude otherwise, so they write page after mind-numbing page of sterile legal language designed to justify authorizing it anyway. It's not torture if the victim survives it intact. It's not against the law if it takes place outside the United States. Waterboarding is OK as long as it isn't performed more than twice in a 24-hour period. Sleep deprivation of shackled prisoners for seven days at a time is permissible as long as the victim's diaper is changed frequently. And on and on and on.
Do they know this is torture? Of course they do. Glenn Greenwald is right when he says the excerpt below is probably all you need to read. What it says, in a nutshell, is that when other people do this stuff, we naturally call it torture. But when we do it, it's not. Sickening.
UPDATE: More here from David Corn.
If you're not a sadist, you're not a torturer
Kevin,
I think the second highlight is key. If you torture but don't enjoy it, it's not torture.
Sire, that is nonsense
By your 'logic', Sire, if a detainee was attached to a mechanical device that administered waterboarding, for example, then it would not constitute torture.
Torture is not the equivalent of sadism, it is legally defined as a practice, not as a particular state of mind. Of course, for the benefit of the position you bring to this question, you can't state that simple truth, and instead engage in the additional torture of Words in order to achieve your clear aim, that of explaining away war crimes.
It has not worked, Sire, it has not worked.
Furthermore
And, Sire, if you wish to know that I am Right in this regard, and that you are Wrong, then here is the text of the UN Convention against Torture pertaining to of what it is constituted:
"For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."
I look forward to your retracting your incorrect assertion and apologising for your ignorance in this matter, Sire.
I think you are missing the
I think you are missing the point msoliverca was making. The statement was clearly tongue-in-cheek. In other words, msoliverca agrees with your definition and not that of the Bush Administration.
Aome things are black and white
It is odd that the same people who see abortion in black and white terms see so many shades of gray when it comes to torture.
Shorter memo - yeah, we torture, but we are careful to stop when we get the answers we want.
Boronx
The Soviets excelled at torture that didn't permanently damage the victim. I've heard that the most effective technique over all others was to put someone in a building with no windows, treat them fairly well, but when they go to sleep advance all clocks by seven hours, change the guards, and wake the victim up in one hour. Stealth sleep deprivation.
That explains the building I
That explains the building I work in.
Boronx
I think the second highlight is key. If you torture but don't enjoy it, it's not torture.
This is just the American attitude. Yeah, we commit warcrimes, but we didn't mean it, we were trying to help. Yeah, we enslaved Africans and massacred the natives, but we feel bad about it.
Down?
This isn't defining torture down. It's defining it away.
"You signed the papers. You wanted to be here!" -Drill Sgt. Leach, 1971
...when other people do this
That's someone who considers himself an overlord talking about what he will permit the serfs to do, and how he will treat the serfs himself. When you speak of the peasants and you are in a higher class, you give yourself extra privileges.
I think that Obama's
I think that Obama's gutlessness in this affair is equally if not more sickening.
Defining Torture Down
The rationale that it is “looking backward” to prosecute but “looking forward” not to prosecute begs the question “looking how far”?
Not looking past ones nose renders the direction one is looking moot:
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/04/you-must-see-past-your-nose-obama.html
Actually, the line after the
Actually, the line after the second highlight is more revealing:
In short, the CIA program is designed to subject detainees to no more duress than is justified by the government's interest in protecting the United States from future terrorist attacks.
In other words, prima facie illegal 'duress' imposed on suspects by interrogators is justified if it corresponds to the level of the perceived threat, but it cannot be excessive relative to the level of that threat.
I want to see the tables and charts which correlate specific techniques with specific perceived threats. That would make for some good reading.
Item 1: For shoe-bombs thrown at US embassies, waterboarding and insects are permissible; wall slamming is not.....
Sadism is when you purposely
Sadism is when you purposely go in and inflict bodily harm for fun. Torture is well defined in treaties, does not include "fun", and goes beyond bodily harm.
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The congress of the USA, has
The congress of the USA, has officially forbidden tortures concluded suspected of terrorism. For a bill 222 deputies, against - 199 have expressed.
It is curious, that the Minister of Justice, the general public prosecutor of the USA has refused to answer a question, whether he considers as torture compulsory immersing in water at interrogations.
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Sadism
Sadism is when you purposely go in and inflict bodily harm for fun. Torture is well defined in treaties, does not include "fun", and goes beyond bodily harm.
Defining Torture
Be that as it may, that technique was used three times, the last being in 2003, and was banned internally by the Bush administration in 2006. So, even if you think waterboarding is unquestionably torture, then the “end of torture” came in 2003, or at the latest 2006.