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Originally Posted by Willravel
It is torture when used to coerce a confession, to punish, or to seek pleasure.
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"coerce" a confession, to "punish"..., do you really want to stand by that? That seems pretty vague.
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Because waterboarding causes incredible mental stress and extreme discomfort, a discomfort which is worse than many instances of actual pain, it causes substantial and real suffering. This suffering is mental pain, and mental pain is listed as one of the two circumstances for torture, the other of course being physical pain.
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What if a person has been trained and it does not cause that person "incredible" mental stress and "extreme" discomfort. How do we measure "incredible" and "extreme". Taking it to an extreme, if I had to watch Rachel Maddow's show for an extended period of time, I would be put under "incredible" mental stress. So far we are being very subjective, and it appears we don't know it torture until we can determine "ectreme" discomfort or "incredible" stress. what if we have a person who is willing to blow themselves up, how would waterboarding comparatively speaking be "increadible" stress, or "extreme" discomfort?
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It is the same torture because the reaction to waterboarding is innate to virtually every person. It is a survival instinct in humans to a combination of disorientation and drowning. I am unaware of anyone without the understood reaction to waterboarding. If there is such a person, the torture would not be the same, but short of finding that person and demonstrating his immunity to the process, I'd have to say it's virtually the same for everyone.
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How do you reconcile your position above with the billions of people on this planet that react to things differently? You position here seems to defy what makes us unique humans.
Then if we do assume you are correct, I think it would be very simple to create of list of "torture" and "not torture", with no shades of gray, can you?
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No, but it's not an effective method of extracting information so I can't imagine it's use being necessary.
Same as above.
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Not effective? Doesn't that depend? Earlier you wrote about "extreme" discomfort and "incredible" mental stress, what if the threat puts a person into those conditions?
Also, If "it" is not effective, what is?
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Same.
Same.
Same.
Same.
I'd suggest you use proven and legal techniques to extract intelligence instead of torture, and I'd warn you that should you ever be prosecuted for torturing it's entirely possible that there would be serious legal consequences for your decisions.
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The point is - what is legal? So far, it is still not clear. waterboarding could be clearly defined as torture, what about being in a confined space with inspects? Some people live in highly insect infected areas, and others have a phobia to insects, couldn't that be torture to one and "normal" to another?
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Then again I've never attended law school, never passed the bar, and I've never practiced law, so you'd probably want to take my recommendation with a grain of salt. My understanding of waterboarding and torture comes from what I learned of torture from professors, books, articles, and of course being waterboarded myself.
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This seems to contradict your earlier posts on torture. I would have thought torture would be very easy for you to identify when you saw it. I don't think law school... is needed. If it is needed, isn't that a problem for the CIA folks in the field needing to make decisions and act in some cases under short time pressures.
If I am your CIA agent and I creatively come up with a questioning method on the spot using what is available and a reasonable interpretation of the guidelines to save lives that you later deem slightly over the line how do you respond? Would I get the benefit of the doubt, do you throw the book at me to the full extent of your authority with no regard for the circumstances and the result?