QFT. Torture is already defined.

what mob are you talking about pan?
are you seriously arguing that the geneva conventions that limit the use of torture is an example of mob rule?

and the reason for the koolaid crack, really, is that context matters---i'll put it in big letters if you like---this "debate" is happening in a particular context, one in which exactly the kind of "innocent" questioning of the category torture has resulted in lovely situations like gitmo and abu ghraib.

the bottom line so far as that is concerned is that i support an expansive defintion of torture.
i do not see much ambiguity in the present legal definitions.
i don't know where you see any.

you dont really explain yourself---you argue from a remove, as if it is some a to of intellectual heroism to pose these questions at all.

but what are these questions, really?

"if i stick pins under your fingernails and snap the heads, is that ok?"

or

"if i run electrical current through you that hurts, but which i dont think hurts that much, is that ok?"

i dont see the heroism in that.
i dont see the freedom of thought in it.
i see a strange and kind of disconcerting parlor game being played in which degrees of pain DELIBERATELY inflicted is treated as a kind of intellectual toy for you to play with.

and even if you try to hold these questions at a remove, to my mind this is where they are heading.

I didn't argue any of those as being torture did I?

I asked and yet you still refuse to straight out answer: Is withholding 1 day's rations and/or exercise considered torture to you?

If it is to you and I do not believe it is.... then where on something that minor and IMHO is nothing more than a very uncomfortable day, do we go from there to find compromise on what is torture?

By comparing it to these examples, it does nothing to answer my question, except show me you refuse to answer because you fear the answer you give may not be approved of by your peers. That's what I believe you are showing me.

I don't agree with stooping to other countries levels. We really need to get back to the importance of morals and human respect.

Whenever I see this thread, I think to myself "Should the United States of America gang rape people?"

And then I think that there are some people who would have no problem, if we, as a country, enacted a policy to engage in the selective gang raping of certain people who might possibly have useful information. We would probably have to use some sort of euphemism for "gang rape", though. Perhaps "coercive intrusion".

In any case, It's a tough call. On the one hand, there is that ultimate torture-porn wet dream of a situation where we just gotta torture some dude because he knows about a bomb that's supposed to go off in an hour. On the other hand, there's that guy that's completely innocent, who gets caught at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and ends up naked in a man-pyramid with some hick soldier, cigarette hanging out of her slack jaw, giving a sociopathic thumbs up in the foreground.

It's tricky. I imagine most of the people who like the idea of torturing think of it in the Jack Bauer context, while most of the people who've actually been tortured think of it in the Uday Hussein rape-room context.

While I know Gang rape is torture and probably 99.99% of TFPer would say it is torture..... what about withholding 1 day's rations and/or exercise. 1 day... not a week, not days that have R's in them..... 1 day.

Is that torture? Yes or no?

If you open the door you must be prepared to receive the exact same treatment.

It's all good man. :D
You seem passionately involved in this part of the discussion and I'm trying not to derail or thread jack.

Any attempt to answer that question, I really think, is dependent upon the given circumstances of the situation. I realise this is vague and doesn't really answer your question, but it's as honest as I can be. In some situations, such as your prisoner has obviously not eaten in MANY hours, or perhaps even days, denying them food for one more minute might equate into torture. Whereas, a prisoner who is clearly not in need of food this second, and might actually be accustomed to eating one meal a day, or even every other day (depending on just how impoverished they may be, or the circumstances of their dietary needs), denying them food for several hours might easily be considered a forgivable oversight. Who can say?

If you are asking me this question specifically, I'd have to say denying anyone basic human necessities (such as food), for whatever reasons and under any normal circumstances, for longer than you would normally go without it yourself, could be construed as inhumane behaviour, thus classifying it as torture in my book. Keep in mind, I'm not the man who decides what is and is not torture, and I'm not any of the authors of the articles defining torture in any part or it's entirety. This is solely my opinion and should be viewed as such.

I think a good general rule of thumb is, if it is "unpleasant" in nature and you are not willing to do it to yourself, then doing it to someone else isn't right. :thumbsup:

Very interesting. I must take time to digest this before I reply.

(Not to threadjack, but he reason I am passionate about this is simple, we know the worst... but if we don't define the least, then we are in trouble. Because torture to me is horrendous and NEVER should be used.

But if we have people calling everything done torture.... then we minimize the word by overuse and overkill, thus it no longer has meaning (maybe to individuals but to the whole, the government, the military etc there is no meaning anymore to the word.

If for instance you cannot even answer "withholding 1 day's exercise and/or rations" as torture or not, the problem becomes huge.

Somewhere, along the lines, a compromise has to be reached as to what is "uncomfortable/unpleasant and what is torture. Because if the compromise is not found, both sides will begin to go farther apart in opposite directions, until the word and the actions have no meaning whatsoever.

Those who went too far calling things torture will be seen as lenient beyond all reason..... those who went to far torturing will be seen as bloodthirsty and without conscience and the middle will be left scratching their head wondering how it got this far.

I just want to see a that line... and the start of seeing that line is seeing how people define torture in their own words. Not someone else's, not attacking someone for asking, but simply answering the question so people can understand each other's definition of the word, so it can have a true meaning and it will never be minimized/obsolete and ignored. So that the actions will not go unpunished because there is the line that every has agreed to, or people unfairly punished for doing something the majority does not consider torture.)



(I, as I wrote above, could see personal events skewing my judgment but short of those.... I could never see myself committing acts I believe to be torturous.... but again, What I believe may not be torturous others may think it is.)

I guess another way of looking at it, for me personally at least, is this .....

There is denying food to the point of inducing hunger, and while this may be cruel or even possibly inhumane to SOME, I personally don't see it as all that unreasonable to establish control of a prisoner. You feed them on your time table, not theirs, and you make them realise their need to eat is at your discretion. Again, this can be considered as cruel, and even inhumane, but I think in a situation involving a prisoner, there has to be established guidelines for enforcing your control over them that goes beyond simply incarcerating them against their will.

Then there is denying food to the point of starvation. There is no question when you have reached this point, as signs of malnutrition are unmistakable. Once you have crossed the line from "being cruel" for the sake of establishing control over your prisoner to what could only be starving them, then you have gone into the region of torture in my opinion.

As for defining a timetable to determine in hours when it becomes too much, that really is situational and heavily dependent on a variety of circumstances not yet mentioned.

Not only do most people not consider depriving a day's rations to be torture, I highly doubt it is an effective means of getting information from a hostile POW. I think we can skip all that and get to the point where we are causing people discomfort and pain - mental or physical.

I'm not sure how this became a bone of contention, but no, I don't think it's torture to withhold food for a day, provided the person from which the food is being withheld is your average person. There are probably some situations where it should be considered torture.

Do you think it's torture to only provide food that the prisoners religion does not approve of?

I used to work with a guy who was in the first Gulf War. Not sure exactly what he did but my hit was intelligence work. We often talked about our military experiences. One day after helping another co-worker move we we're having a cook out, pork ribs. We were sitting off by ourself and he looked down at his plate, held up a rib and said "This is how we knew we had them." "What the hell are you talking about?" "Pork, Muslims can't eat pork, so we'd take all the MRE's that contained pork, remove everything but the main dish and give them to the prisoners we wanted to talk. Breakfast, lunch and dinner- pork. These guys would starve themselves for days, sometimes weeks. When they started eating they'd start talking, once they ate the pork it meant they gave up on their religion, it was nothing now to give up on their political allegiances."

Well, it isn't a question with simple answers.

I would have to define that as torture - obviously, to devout Muslims or Jews or Hindus who all have dietary specifications in their religions, it is akin to starving them. A choice between starving to death or suffering torments on their immortal soul is pretty low.

Now, if the only food that the local Stalag has available is something that is not kosher for the prisoner to eat (i.e., due to food shortages brought about by war) that's a different matter and just a bit of bad luck.

you have got to be kidding...

No, I don't think he is...

I'm not sure why so many conservatives seem to think that, inside, people who disagree with them are thinking just like them only they're too ashamed to admit it. :rolleyes:

I think the "giving them only food that goes against their religion" is a brilliant idea, and hardly torture.

that's nice, jinnkai--in the real world, that's understood as intentional humiliation/degradation of a prisoner.

you know, the world with laws that govern it.

Ok.... now you are a man returning from Iraq. You did your duty and watched POWs for a week or 2. The worst thing you ever did was withhold food and exercise 1 day, because you were ordered to. You were lucky enough never to have had to shoot at anyone.

You come home, you have a wife in the University's Master's of Social Work program. Basically you are coming home with the belief you have a nice life ahead.

You get home.

Your wife, you find has become an anti war supporter. No problem, you love her, you even agree with what she says... you were there because you needed to pay for college and got called to go. You truly saw no choice.

So, you start telling your wife what you did and what you saw and when you get to the point of having withheld the rations 1 day to a POW that refused to follow rules and tried to create problems. Your wife tells you you tortured that person and starts despising you. Eventually, she stops sleeping in the same bed. They tried marriage counseling, she couldn't get over the fact "you tortured a man". She starts telling you that she no longer can love a man that treated someone in such a way.

Within 2 months she tells you to leave and she wants a divorce. You never drank or did drugs, but now you find yourself doing anything to mask that pain of losing your wife because you followed orders.

A year goes by, you have by dropped out of school, got kicked out of the reserves for drug use and find yourself in a detox facility.

You are confused and unsure of living life anymore because what you did while there, withholding food.

Hence, I want to know the answer to the question, what does one consider torture?

If your husband or wife or anyone in your family came home and told you that they had to withhold a day's rations, would you consider them a torturer?

is this a fictional scenario?

if it isn't, i don't think you have the full story.

if it is a fictional scenario, then it gets derailed almost immediately because you introduce more information about the wife's politics than you provide about the action of your character in iraq, and by doing that turn this into a version of the old rightwing canard about the evil anti-war activists being mean to the returning vet, not understanding the realities of war, etc. in other words, if this is a fictional scenario, the way you write it makes it clear what you're really on about in this thread: you object to the imaginary actions of a straw man you've fashioned about people who oppose the war in iraq and are using the notion of torture to attempt to pose some question that may be deep and important to you, but which to me is neither.

if it's not a fictional scenario, then like i said you obviously don't have the whole story or chose not to include important information that explains the situation. commission or omission, it's hard to tell.

either way, if you'd spent as much attention setting up the situation in iraq as you did the red herring plotline about the poor victimized misunderstood but entirely abstract guy-who-comes-back-from-iraq as you did the wife's politics, maybe you'd get a better answer.

Causing severe pain or anguish. Withholding a day's rations would be considered torture if the prisoner has reason to believe his or her captors would go so far as starvation methods.

It is not that physiologically damaging, but it is a psychological assault. It is degrading and it raises the question of basic human rights. Though it might seem mild, withholding a day or more worth of rations would be a form of torture as this is the starvation threshold. Even if we would be reluctant to call it outright torture, it isn't a practice one should do if they wish to avoid violating human rights.

No, for three reasons. Any one of which is sufficient.

Torture is ridiculously ineffective. There are effective interrogation techniques, but torture really isn't one of them.

Torture corrupts the torturer and the tortured. People who torture become damaged, and if we have those with power becoming damaged, it fucks everyone.

It is evil.

Moral of the story, marry a better woman, what a bitch.

This thread is really quite silly.

If I knew innocent people were going to die and we had the said terrorist in custody I'd dip him in acid until he talked.

No one deserves to die for YOUR morals when it can be prevented. What you are saying is their lives are worth less to you then your own precious sense of self importance.

Life isn't a movie, its worse then any movie. In the last 100 years over 100 million people have been murdered by their own governments, and somewhere around that in wars. Your esthetic sense will have little impact in making it better.

True story. And no here is no more to the story as I knew of him and I personally knew the wife (from some classes and such) before all this.

It wasn't she had another guy.

It wasn't that something over there affected his life negatively like oooo seeing people killed or maimed.

She simply believed that he was some monster simply because he withheld 1 day's rations on a POW. Even she has stated that she can understand why and that he was ordered to but it is torture and she cannot forgive him no matter how hard she tried.

What more of the story is here?

(BTW..... You can look from day 1 my views on he war have not changed at all.... I have been and continue to be against it. I do however support the troops and believe that if they are going to be there, then we need to do all we can for them to support them. I also believe that we need to support veterans here better. But then again I am a vet.)

No, they put him in solitary and basically put him to bed. He had been warned to stop and refused.


I agree with this, as I have stated numerous times.... even if effective, chances are the others have changed the plans once that person was captured.

I just don't see the extreme on the low end. I can understand physical or psychological to the point where normal people would say, "That is just wrong".... Bu to make a punishment much like an a parent does to some kids (Go to bed without supper) is ridiculous and cheapens the argument against torture, to those it is ok with.

Actually, other than that issue she has always seemed decent. I got along quite well with her. And she was in no way militant.... or I didn't see it in her.

I can agree with that when I see people being extremist on the safe side.

I can acknowledge that as a good point.

I have a feeling as one poster said before, none of us truly know how we would react. It's great and feel good to say you would react what you deem moralistically correct. It's great and feel good to say what your friends want to hear so that you have their "respect" for not speaking your own mind.

But if put in the circumstance at the right time.... I doubt anyone except Jesus Christ (if he were to post here) would be able to truly answer that question the same as they do here.

I heard that in one of the -stans, they boil people in oil. Maybe get some pointers from them?

Silly is right.

That is the standard "Jack Bauer" torture fantasy isn't it? I would presume most torture occurs under less dramatically pleasing circumstances. I mean, if every third torturing instance involved an imminent chemical weapon release or nuclear bomb blast odds are there's be at least a few mushroom clouds or quarantine zones in America.

While I think a lot of people would agree with you on this (except for wanting to do it themselves) I don't think that it is really all that relevant in the context of discussion on torture as a general policy. Abu Ghraib looked nothing like any episode of 24 I'd ever seen and extraordinary rendition isn't really something you do when a nuclear bomb blast is imminent.

How about this: no one deserves to get tortured so that you can sleep better at night. What you are saying is that your precious sense of self importance and prime-time television informed notions of just torture are more important than safety, mental health of someone you've never met, someone who might just be completely innocent, someone who could very well just give us useless information as a result of being tortured anyway.

I hope you listen to your own advice before you go around dipping anyone in acid.

pan:

you have this story from the guy, i assume.

it reads to me like a rationalization of the breakdown of his marriage than a story about what happened in iraq. i am agnostic about this, btw---i haven't the faintest idea what the situation might have been, what this guy might have done or not done.

but there must be more to it---either in iraq in terms of context, way it was told, something---or something about that relationship.

fundamentally, the story makes no sense.

it may be that these folk are not the chandelier's brightest bulbs and that the marriage broke down over a sustained bout of projection and name-calling, i dont know.

but the story is about the relationship between these two people, really.
the "torture" question arises in that context and seems to refer to that context.

for example, was he on duty at abu ghraib?
not everyone who did a turn there did interrogations, but at least if that was the location, the story would make more sense..

We can never say never. Unfortunately we must trust the people in the know.

I can say never to torture. And if you mean the current administration in regards to "people in the know" I do not (and will not) trust them in any way or in any form. Too many lies for too long.

That's the story man. There's nothing more to add.

Sometimes life doesn't make sense but it's still life.

I just asked a question, because I can't believe any one would think withholding 1 day's rations or exercise would even be close to torture. But obviously people do.

To me to call something like that torture, minimizes real torture in people's minds so that when you eventually say "torture" people will minimize the actions and not pay attention.

You have to set standards so that all people have some idea what is meant.

People, including myself, have talked to her but in her mind, that was and is torture and no one or nothing will change her mind.

It's truly sad and irrational, but that is what some vets are coming home to.

There's a touch of crazy about someone like that, and you should consider yourself blessed you escaped it without kids (I think) and only bewilderment.

Sounds like she was looking as much for an excuse as anything else, and life is too short to deal with the crazy ones.

uh---yeah.
i can't even pretend to understand what's up with that story, pan.
and i can't even really tell who it's about.


i am even unclear about the question you posed based on it:
it doesn't seem to me that the boundary torture/brutality/ordinary activity is relevant to it--because the operative problem is what the ex understood these to mean and what understood was therefore appropriate for her--i guess. ustwo's crazy theory seems as plausible as any other to fill in the blanks there.


but i probably wouldn't have taken it in the direction you did--"this is what some vets are coming home to"--simply because that generalization rests on a pile of other generalizations that i don't think anything warrants.

all i would have said on the basis of the story is what is obvious: this is what this particular cat ran into. and that is must have sucked for everyone involved.


but i just don't think full disclosure has been at work--not via you, pan, but via the story sources.

it doesn't make sense.

Not my wife. This lady might have. I don't know. I only know that when he came home from Iraq, she hated her husband, calling him a torturer solely because he withheld food for 1 day.

Well, UsTwo, I'm sure you remember my wife from here....... fiery one she is.:thumbsup:

Ah good, I thought I had been confused in all your old posts and this was about you. I knew you had issues with your ex-wife (who I don't recall posting tbh, I tend not to follow which poster knows which one) and I didn't recall this but thought maybe I missed it.

Well at any rate then HE is lucky, you too, remember you can date the crazy ones but don't marry them :P

ONly if it's between two consenting adults in the privicy of their own home. Or just for shits and giggles.

She'd be absolutely right. Under the Geneva Conventions, military forces are banned from using 'starvation of civilians as a method of warfare'.

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starvation
n 1: a state of extreme hunger resulting from lack of essential
nutrients over a prolonged period [syn: famishment]
2: the act of starving; "they were charged with the starvation
of children in their care" [syn: starving]

During World War 2, interred Jews had to survive on 300-600 calories a day. Thousands died within months of being interred. As a result of said torture, it was included in the Geneva Conventions that the use of starvation on a civilian population is strictly and without exception illegal.

I myself have fasted quite a few times, surviving on less than 600 calories a day. Even with that caloric intake, I felt hunger pains in the first 7 hours, which only got worse throughout the day. By 24 hours the pain is quite serious and can't be ignored or quelled by liquid. Without those 600 calories, the pain is much, much worse.

What would you call causing continuing pain to a prisoner? Not torture?

Please will, don't act dense on purpose, I don't think you are that insane to compare the systematic starvations of Jewish prisoners in Nazi death camps with a guy not eating for a day.

Seriously.

I can't be blamed if you can't comprehend the historical significance and reasoning behind the illegality of starvation. As a matter of fact, I should be applauded for attempting to educate you. :thumbsup:

In all seriousness, starvation is torture. Torture is the intentional infliction of suffering, be it physical, mental or emotional. The withholding of necessary food causes physical and emotional suffering. This is completely obvious and self evident. Prima facie.

I can comprehend your angle just fine, its just ludicrous.

I hope you only mean that you're unwilling to accept the historical significance. You do agree with the definition of torture in bold, right? Or do you have your own definition?

Torture is like assassination. A useful tool, but one that should never be stated as part of a countries doctrine. Leave it for the black op guys. To declare it as a part of your normal doctrine sets a dangerous pressidence. Use it in sparing situations in which you can claim total ignorance.

The black op guys aren't going to see any reasonable success rate with it, so no, not even black ops gets a free pass.

Torture. Doesn't. Work. It just doesn't. Even if you get the right answer, it's not dependable. It's useless from an intelligence standpoint, and it's reprehensible from a moral and human rights standpoint. There's simply no excuse.

1) How is 1 day of withholding rations starving anyone? I have a feeling you talk to men that have been in battle in any war and they may have gone a day without eating or sleep because they lacked the rations.

I have gone a day without food a few times and it hasn't killed me, never once made me sick, except for a few hunger pangs, I didn't feel in bad shape at all.

2) This was a POW, NOT a civilian. There is a difference. Also this man was being punished because of behavior problems. I look at it much like a parent sending a child to bed without dinner.

If this is your definition of torture, then we are in trouble and I thank God you are not in power.

Sometimes, it does. It is morally reprehensible. But like any other tool, used right, it's effective. Am I fan of it? No. But I won't discount anything that may be of use.

Do I really have to look up starvation? Suffering from lack of food or nourishment. Suffering (hunger pain) from lack of food or nourishment = starvation.
You failed to mention it was a POW. Of course a POW is still a human being. A soldier feels the same pain as a civilian.

Also, if I were in power we wouldn't be at war so the conversation would be moot.

No, seriously, torture cannot produce reliable results. It's practically psych 101. I can elaborate on why if you'd like, but it's established science. It's not a case of "Well if it's done right, then it does yield reliable intel".

If withholding food is done for psychological reasons as much as physical. ..if the person has no idea if or when he will be fed again...its torture.

It's one thing to withhold food from someone for a day. Which by itself is in violation of the GC. But withholding food for a day or even several hours and telling the POW "Food? We're not giving you any food. Talk equals food." is another thing altogether.

like i keep saying, pan, there is alot of information missing from the story.

personally, i don't have a judgment because i don't feel like i know basic stuff about the situation. the distinction would turn on what dc said, but there's no way to know anything about that from the info we have to work with.

So publicly have ethics, privately do what ever the hell you want?

Of the many, many problems I have with this logic- who gets to decide what situations require using it sparingly may be the biggest.

Yeah, it's kind of like asking a mechanic what's wrong with your car and only telling him it doesn't work, but no details and he can't look at. Could be anything from out of gas to a blown engine, not enough data input.

A ruler doesn't always have the option of acting honorably. In a perfect world, this wouldn't be an issue at all. But it's not a perfect world.
Really, let's have a show of hands here.
Who is losing sleep because someone is being tortured in a prison camp right now? There are things that go on behind the scenes that make torture seem like a walk in the park, all done to keep what ever country is doing it safe and to keep them men in power where they are. I happen to have a pretty comfortable life over all, and I'm not going to shed a few tears because some guy who wants to kill me simply because I was born here is being beat to a pulp or robbed of some food. Not to mention that many of the people saying we are torturing them are saying so just to make us look bad in the public eye, not because we are. It's part of Al-Qaeda's freaking hand book to claim tortured if they are captured to make us look bad for Gods sake.

Pan if we keep finding things to agree on I'm going to have to get you signed up for my newsletter soon.