Well, like what? Aside from things like certain people describing water boarding as 'having a little water splashed on ones face', and our lovely media's complete failure to actually, you know, investigate or report anything, I think most reasonable people are pretty clear on what is and is not torture. One can't reasonably expect an answer to things like "Is being deprived of sleep torture?" - That's far to vague, and doesn't give any context whatsoever. If I can't sleep in my prison cell because I'm afraid of the dark, I'm not being tortured. But if I'm given nothing to sleep on but freezing cold damp cement, while being kept in total darkness for days on end with a recording of dogs barking constantly playing...

Well, that's fair. My point was that if you start to list all of the things that are torture, the list is never going to be complete. You have to be somewhat vague and use terms that are open to interpretation. Consider that there's no objective way to measure pain - at all. Pain is a completely subjective experience - it has to do with exactly what is happening to you, your mental state, and lots of other factors. How much does being poked with a needle hurt (ie, an injection)? I've had several dozen injections throughout my life for vaccinations and whatnot. I get a flu shot every year. Sometimes they hurt more than others.

And consider things that are not painful, per say, but might still be torture. I, personally, cannot *stand* repetitive noises. Listening to a tape of a baby crying or a dog barking in a loop for several days really would be torture for me. So you have to go by what the person actually experiences, and the intent of the person doing it to them. Wikipedia to the rescue:

I think that's a pretty good definition. It's good enough for someone who is responsible for prisoners to safely say he isn't torturing someone - if you follow the rules, and don't do anything outside of the rules to coerce or punish your prisoners, then you're fine. Being locked up probably involves severe mental suffering, but there are various laws, regulations, and international treaties that explain what the conditions are that prisoners should be kept so the imprisonment is as humane as possible.

I've been quite open, or at least I thought I have been.

I just want to know what individuals are voting on.

Like I have posted, withholding a day's rations and/or sleep to me is not torture. I'm sure that I could answer "I never would approve torture" but my parameters and definition maybe quite different than another's.

I do not think it wrong nor improper to ask for one's belief in what they consider torture.

It's easy to point to laws and treaties and say that. Meanwhile, the press reports this is happening and that person says "ohhhh my that also", while another scratches their head going "how is that torture?"

I'm trying to say how can you condemn something if you are not willing to give the parameters on that which you condemn? The parameters will always change as will the vagueness until neither condemnation nor act mean anything.

well, pan, this is probably not going to read the way it would sound if we were having a conversation face to face--i dont know if there's anything to be done about it--but i've done alot of work over the years on the history of torture in the west, its legal and ethical problems. so this isn't a question that i approach particularly lightly, nor is it something that i have casual opinions about--i could trot out credentials if you want, but that seems stupid--so to my mind, there really is not much in the way of ambiguity about what is and is not torture--and posing questions about where it stops and starts is problematic.

i don't really know what to say beyond this--it is simply not the case that every conversation about every topic is the same as every other and that your or anyone else's simple opinion on the matter is just hunky dory because it's just your opinion.

here's why: in the question of torture, if you think about it, you get straight into problems of aestheticizing the deliberate, pre-meditated inflicting of often appalling levels of pain on another person--the kind of thing that leaves people damaged physically and mentally, often for life--have you read about what these practices do to people?

http://www.globalexchange.org/countr...xico/4470.html
http://www.subliminal.org/tibet/test...-Congress.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...articleId=4865

it doesn't matter who does this, it is fucking wrong: pure and simple wrong.

and given the level of damage on the victims--and often on the interrogators as well if they maintain a degree of attachment to being-civilized as a function of these actions--attempt to limit the definition of torture end up being suspect.

then there is an ethical problem that playing around with something like this as a little thought experiment raise for the ones who do them.

this is an ugly ugly area of human activity.
it gets worse the more you know about it---and that from a viewpoint of reading--god only knows what the consequences of this kind of barbarism would be on you or i or anyone here if they endured it themselves.

there are some areas where a broad prohibition on a set of practices is a good thing, so much so that it really doesn't matter if it goes further than a draconian interpretation of the category might lead you to think necessary.

this is some foul shit. i dont know why you'd want to see more of it. i really dont.

That was informative RB, thank you. I appreciate the links.

I think everyone can agree on the worst (so to speak). I'm thinking more on the "Lighter" side.

As I used the example: withholding a day's rations or exercise to me isn't in the slightest torture, but to some it is. What is allowable, I guess would be the better question.

Like I stated above I tend to over think these things.

I haven't read the whole thread, but I gotta tell you, so much of the question will turn on how you define torture. Infliction of pain, sure, I think everyone would agree on that. But once you get past that, the questions get murky. How about causing fear? Shame? Discomfort? How much?

This actually is one of the areas in which I don't ask initially "does it work?" Because torture is wrong even if it works, just like murder is wrong even if it achieves some goal and thus "works." I just think we have to confront the issue that some unpleasant treatment is not torture and some is, and finding the line is not always easy.

Well put. That fine line is what I am trying to find. What separates "unpleasant treatment" from "torture"? This is what we as a nation need to define and set limits and abide by them.

Some people go to extremes on both sides and I feel that it hurts us more not having this defined set limits and divide us when we should be united in these times we are going through as a nation.

I think in some minds it is easier to control a nation divided and to keep them in fear than it is to control a nation united and perhaps while scared of what is possible, united in cause and solution.

the pbs "frontline" 2-part series on the iraq war is quite interesting--i dont know if pbs shows air like network shows or if they're syndicated so would air at different times--but the theme of redefining torture runs through it and the debates, particularly between colin powell and rumsfeld/defense dept lawyers turns on many of the questions above (the legal and political more than ethical)--at the center of it is the attempt to abandon the geneva conventions--i'd suggest watching as i was surprised by how good the program is. there are obviously interpretive questions to be raised about it as well...

I think this quibbling about 'what is torture' is only entertainment to keep us occupied while they do whatever the hell they want.

Most importantly above, as rb mentions, is that this country (or at least the current administration) is questioning adherence to the Geneva Conventions. What does our complacency with that say about our answer to the question, 'what is torture'? Fact is, we are questioning at least one method of interrogation that we have used in this decade (waterboarding). One that has been deemed torture by this country in the past and one for which we have convicted military personnel for performing, as recently as Vietnam. This to me says that we are not a reliable arbiter of our own standards when it comes to the use of and our comfort level with the practice of 'aggressive interrogation techniques.' I don't trust that most people in this country have the imagination and empathic ability to realistically consider and envision the consequences of torture and, importantly, an America that tortures. And, in fact, it really disgusts me that this is even a matter for discussion in the public square. We need to unite in our agreement about the use of torture? No, not for me. We needed to be there already. This is not the country I was raised to be a part of.

Torture? Sure, lets join the likes of the Changi Prison or Buchenwald staff. Oh, maybe Pol Pot, Dr. Mengele and Idi Amin will act as consultants to us so we get it right the first time, not like Abu Ghraib or GITMO.

Share a joint with your POW and you can’t stop him from telling you why his Kalashnikov sucks, Uncle Ho is stupid for sending them down the trail and that it is not really in Nam, it was across the wire in Laos and Cambodia. Giap put it there because theAmericans won’t cross the wire. and so on and so on

Yes, it was my joint.

This is exactly what I am talking about. Closed mindedness. One asks for a person's definition and what the "least" is considered and the person blows up saying "Torture is torture and we don't need to unite in an agreement on use."

It's not an agreement on use it is what is torture? Like I keep saying withholding 1 days rations and exercise to me is not torture, it is probably an uncomfortable and maybe unpleasant treatment of a POW or prisoner.... yet not 1 person has stood up and stated "I agree with that".... Instead we get definitions of what torture is and condemnations for asking what they consider torture... but not 1 iota of true discussion of what THEY personally believe to be the difference between torture or "uncomfortable, unpleasant treatment".

How can we treat our prisoners and POW's in anyway if we do not have a discussion on what is torture and what isn't and then arrive at something that the majority on both sides can agree with?

Are we to turn over our sovereignty and how we treat POWs and prisoners (and I am talking about federal, state and local criminals in prison also) to some other country or outside authority?

And who approves of what they decide?

I am not so quick to turn over any type of self rule our country has to anyone, not without a fight at least.

BTW this is not a discussion of whether or not we needed to be there or not. I have never been for this war, but I'll be damned if we have treat POWs better than our own men. And I'll be truly damned if I was serving and had someone that killed my friends and was told to treat him like he was an innocent and give him every amenity possible.

Sorry no fucking way. I'm not going to "torture" torture you but I'm not going to make your confinement a pleasant stay in a 5 star hotel either.

I'll answer that, if only to stop the question from being repeated so many times. :D Food, like air and water, is a basic human necessity. We all require it to survive, and to refuse it to any human being, regardless of why you are refusing it, could be construed as torture. What degree of torture this is, I cannot say and refuse to get involved in a semantic debate about shades of gray, but it is indeed SOME form of torture. Refuse someone food for a few hours or so and it can be considered cruel, perhaps even inhumane to some perspectives. Refuse someone food for weeks at a time, and it will probably become murder .. but somewhere between the two and it most certainly becomes torture. Where exactly, I cannot say.

First, I don't think anyone is saying we must treat prisoners BETTER than we treat our own soldiers and such, we are expected to treat them humanely within the letter of the law .. no more.

Second, if you're in a war zone and you "capture" someone who "killed your friends" .. dude .. make sure they're armed, (bullets optional) then kill them BEFORE you capture them, problem solved. :thumbsup:

We decided these questions a long time ago, pan, when we agreed to the Geneva Conventions. But thanks for your in-depth and thoughtful response to my post.

there is no "torture lite"
international treaties do not infringe on national sovereignty: the signing of one is an exercise of sovereignty.
at issue is not whether prisoners of war are being treated better than "our boys"--that is a rambo fantasy.

jesus, pan: seems like you've been nipping at the alberto gonzalez/john yoo flavor of koolaid. get a grip.

A pretty good definition might be that torture is what we would think totally outrageous and uncivilized if someone else did it to an American prisoner. It's still a bit mushy as a definition, but it has the merit of applying the Golden Rule, which isn't a bad way to think about questions like this one.

MM, I sympathize with what your'e saying but the Geneva Conventions aren't definitive about the details. If they were, there wouldn't be any discussion here.

I realize that they are not definitive in an absolute sense, but I don't think it's quite accurate to say that we are having this discussion because of that.

They are definitive in the sense of what we all understood when they were created, but have since forgotten. This is what disturbs me.

They're a little vague. Basically they outline that:

Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture

And...

Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment

Are not allowed. It's vague but not that vague, IMO

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm

well, if the definition was vague, you'd hardly be able to explain that various contortions that the neocons inside bushworld went through to enable torture: refusing to classify people capture in the context of the "war on terror" as prisoners of war because....well....yeah. exploiting perceived vagueness in the definition to legitimate waterboarding, sleep and light deprivation, making people stand in one place for hours and hours, threatening with dogs, exploiting personal phobias, violating religious or social norms with the sole intent to humiliate/degrade, physical violence of various kinds--you know the drill i'm sure--->not a single element of which is ethically acceptable--->not a single element of which is legal---->not a single element of which has worked to generate information that is worth a shit--->but which has been EXTREMELY damaging to the political and moral position of the united states internationally.

and who knows but that colin powell may turn out to be correct in the longer run: not only is this horrific in itself, but it may well end up exposing american pows to similar treatment in the future.

there is no good outcome of screwing about with the notion of torture in order to open space for barbaric actions on the part of the americans.

*and* the damage this has done the bush people politically is very considerable indeed---worse in some ways than the overall--and staggering---incompetence of the conduct of the war in iraq as a whole.



this is an example of the contextual ignorance that makes the "questioning of the notion of torture" here incomprehensible.
surreal business.

I find it odd that we're still debating what is and what isn't torture.

I think Powell is and was right in many ways. History's going to be much kinder to him then Bush/Cheney.

And don't look for me to defend to the neo-cons or Bush and Co. degrading of US standing in the world. The attitude of "I don't care what the rest of the world thinks" while people pound their chest and claim "we're #1 and always will be!" IMO, come from people who are poor students of history who aren't paying much attention to current events.

Why because I am simply asking what defines the "least" torture. Not just the POW's and detainees but the convicts in our prison system.

I even gave an example that not one person has defined as torture or not in their opinion.

Withholding one day's rations and exercise is that torture? I'm not asking if Abu Gharaib was torture, that almost 99% of the people (including myself) would say "yes, that is torture."

Let's say you continue to ignore that simple question, then in some camp prison etc.... some people say they were withheld food and exercise for a day . All of a sudden we have people screaming that is torture.

Now, how can you call it torture if when asked if it is before it happens you refuse to answer. You say it's documented in things that go to extremes one way but barely touch the minimum and thus leave it wide open.

Are you scared that people will go to that limit and stop?

Well if you do not set the min. people will go to the max.

I truly do not see why this is so had to have a true discussion on without being told I'm drinking someone's koolaid. It's something I find interesting and would like to see other's views.

It's easier to point to laws and say see....... (but you do that to immigration and people tell you, the laws don't matter, or any law people like to pick and choose from, but I digress). It's easier to follow a mob when a mob gets going....

But it is hard and requires true individuality and deep thought to stand up, have your own views and freely discuss them.

Kahn, thank you for your post.... I overlooked it and I apologize. I agreed about the daily rations to some degree. And not to ague semantics but if torture is torture then what is the limit? Because ANYTHING can be considered torture by someone.... that is my point where do we draw that line? Between what is to some and what is truly acceptable to the most.

It seems rather plain and simply to me. It's outlined in the GC's and the laws of the US state what can and what can not be done in this regard.

I just don't see it as being that hard.

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?