So do you rescind you earlier assessment that failing to prosecute was cowardly, and now make the claim that failure to subpeona someone to testify was cowardly? Do you acknowledge that your earlier statement was stupid and/or ignorant?
Yep, definitely torture, for phobic victims. Putting me into a coffin for a significant period of time might kill me (due to extreme terror), and would definitely qualify as torture.
That’s just common sense, isn’t it? A subject under torture will say anything that might get the interrogator to stop. It will not necessarily bear any relation to the truth. If the subject does not know the answers, he had better make something up; if he does know, he probably has his diversionary lies prepared already.
[QUOTE=RickJay]
The fact that we actually have people defending this shit and trying to conflate it with military training convinces me that for some, there is literally nothing the U.S. government could do, especially under the administration of their preferred party, that would not be defensible.
If it came to light that the Bush administration had ordered the deaths of one hundred thousand Iraqi children in gas chambers, I’m quite certain that act would have at least several happy defenders here on the SDMB.
[/quote]
We’re talking about a practice that’s been illegal under Common Law since Felton’s Case in the 1620s, if not before, and is arguably ius cogens under International Law. There were literally people in the time of Charles Stewart who had a more liberal outlook than a fair few posters on the SDMB, it seems. The government being prevented from torturing confessions out of suspects was one of the ancient liberties that the American Revolutionaries were fighting to maintain, for Christ’s sake! And now you have posters like Terr remonstrating against a “liberal hive mind”, to which no doubt the Founding Fathers would have freely subscribed, sickened by revelations that would have been deemed unacceptable four hundred years ago.
There’s people here who could justify any act whatsoever as long as it was presented as necessary to the American national interest.
Similarly? SIMILARLY? I think you need to acquaint yourself with the meaning of the word before you use it again. Those things are astoundingly unalike. You attempt to bring them together by waving your magic wand and placing them under the umbrella of “torture”. Beg the question much?
So moderate pain falls shy. Good, that makes my point that outside of extreme cases that are clearly “torture”, it’s a huge grey area.
If it is done for the jollies of the person administering the discomfort/pain, I don’t even think it’s “torture”. It’s worse. At least torture has a strategic point to it. You remove that and we’re in crazy Charlie Manson territory. I don’t doubt these individual exist, but if they do, and have acted thusly, prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. And get them mental help. They’re sick.
Oh, please. The words are used in similar ways, but that doesn’t mean that anyone thinks the two uses refer to identical behavior. That the person being "broken are being "broken for similar reasons.
Not necessarily. You’re forgetting the scale I offered.
Oh, I see that you did. My mistake. But you obviously didn’t digest it. I don’t see how you can read that article and conclude what you do about rectal feeding. Seriously.
The “feeding” part. Getting the body nutrients. Kinda obvious, no?
Bolding mine. And it seems to be necessary as it conflicts with the position you hold. It not only did what IV does, but it had an ancillary benefit, i.e., ending water refusal. And subsequently the need to forcibly administer IV. I think you’re over looking the benefit of reducing the number of encounters of soldier-doctors with needles forcing their will upon a hostile enemy. Also, I’m not sure of the distinctions between IV and “force-feeding”. Don’t know if administering an IV renders "force feeding moot, or if there is benefit to the force feeding. There seems to be. That said, I think I’d rather have a suppository type thing shove up my butt than having a tube forced down my mouth or nose. It appears to be, oddly, much less invasive.
Perfectly okay? No. I’d hate it. And that would be the point of the treatment. If I didn’t hate it there would be no reason to comply in order to stop the discomfort.
As far as friends or family. I can honestly say that if they were part of a group that had just blown up 3,000 innocent people and had knowledge of other, similar plans, I would understand it to be the right thing to do. As much as It might break my heart for the friend or family member.
Now, if you knew that one of your friends or family members were going to be among the next victims, would you be “okay” with making someone stand on a broken leg in order to proven the attack?
I’m not waving any wands – I’m fitting them to the definition of “torture”. They fit pretty cleanly. Torture isn’t just about cutting and breaking bones.
The grey area, if it exists, doesn’t include these particular techniques, which cannot reasonably be described as not causing “severe pain”.
That’s still torture. Torture isn’t just for interrogation – sometimes it’s for (sick) “fun”, sometimes for punishment.
They’re not at all being broken for similar reasons. Military training and answering questions are very different reasons – and the results are very different. One doesn’t cross over. Torturing someone would result in a terrible military recruit.
The scale doesn’t apply to the techniques in question.
You seriously don’t see how protruding the rectum from the anus might be described as “horrific”? Seriously?
It’d be necessary if there wasn’t a better and safer way. And there was.
Yes, punishment by torture is more likely to end water refusal.
I’m not overlooking the benefit of torture here. But that’s not a medical objective – the medical objective is hydration, which would be provided by IV. “Punishment” is not a medical objective.
Yes, but that’s not the same for everyone. Some people might be able to spend all day in there and not freak out. I have an phobia so strong that I don’t even share it, lest someone find out and use it against me. (Hey, you can’t be too safe!) But your answer proves my point that you can’t necessarily simply look at a method and say “torture”. You have to look at duration, judge the person’s tolerance, etc.
What if your friends and/or family were part of a group that just robbed a bank and had knowledge of the whereabouts of the money and/or the rest of the bank robbing crew? Would making them stand on a broken leg until they gave up the location of the money and other robbers be the right thing to do?
What if your friends and/or family were picked up by the police because they looked like a suspect, or were pointed out by a neighbor as a suspect, and then were made to stand on a broken leg until they confessed to the crime? Would that be the right thing to do?
I needed to run, but just want to quickly address this. A few points:
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From what I read, both via the spots here about the report and the article, it does not appear that rectal feeding and a protruding rectum have a close relationship. I think the report relates one instance of that happening. In the article, it talks about the condition in a way that doesn’t tie it to some violent behavior.
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There IS a medical benefit beyond providing nutrients. Both to the prisoner and those caring for him. The fewer encounters in which a prisoner has to be restrained for an IV to be administered or a feeding tube to be inserted the better. Particularly when the prisoner is of the violent I would kill you if I had the chance type.
Also, a doctor friend of mine told me once that the fewer IVs administered even in hospitals the better. Because there is a chance for infection. He told me that hospitals would be interested in his new product because they recognize the danger and are eager to take whatever steps they can to reduce it.
You use “punishment”. You can choose to characterize the action as such, but that’s just your bias coming through. More benignly, it is coercive. Is their unpleasantness involved? Sure. But like I said, I think I’d rather have that than being force fed with a tube.
People have pointed that out for centuries at the least; but the pro-torture people ignore it. They ignore common sense, they ignore the evidence, they ignore the experts; they just know torture works, and works better than anything else. It’s a faith based position, not a rational one; they have faith in torture the way other people have faith in their god or the existence of the soul.
@magellan01:
You’re really, really missing the point.
You’re missing it so badly, it’s nearly as bad as the “paper towel tube” fiasco.
No, you don’t. It’s true that putting me in a coffin for ten minutes wouldn’t qualify as torture, since I don’t have a phobia of torture, whereas giving me painful injections would qualify, given my phobia of needles (which if you’re curious are the subject of a 2008 pit thread–I ain’t fuckin around).
But that doesn’t mean that torture is situational in every context. Some things are torture for everyone. These include the infliction of acute pain, such as cigarette burns to sensitive skin. These include the infliction of acute psychological distress, such as staging mock executions and threatening to murder loved ones and shoving food up the rectum. These include the infliction of chronic suffering, such as inducing hypothermia and depriving sleep over the course of more than a week. All of these are torture to everyone.
And even the specifics you’re talking about fall under a general category. If you’re deliberately activating someone’s phobia in an extreme fashion–whether it’s locking a claustrophobic in a coffin, or it’s putting their head in a cage full of rats–you’re engaging in torture of the “psychological distress” category. This isn’t situational, except that you need to figure out what their phobia is in order to engage in this practice.
Eloquently put, thank you.
“The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know.”
Napoleon
Who woulda thunk that anal rape had the ancillary benefit of making people try to avoid being anally raped, so much that they won’t refuse water. Makes it worthwhile.
It’s awesome that so many people (not necessarily you , magellan01) would think the government is inept when handling taxes, building a budget, enforcing laws, but feel comfortable with the same goverment torturing. “I’m sure they know what they are doing.”
It seems that you’re arguing that nothing can be classified as torture without examining each individual circumstance. That makes it incredibly easy to classify any given scenario as “not torture”, because unless we can interview the victim, we can’t ask him if they actually like that kind of thing.
In short, it seems like just a way to get out of being accused of torture.
Wrong. There is quite a lot that I would object to government doing. For example, applying the same techniques described to US citizens. I am sorry if that offends your sensibilities, but applying severe physical pressure to a very limited number of enemy combatants in order to extract information is just not something I am very worried about.
They’re not all enemy combatants, and it doesn’t extract information. They tortured their own spies, remember?
Just to be clear, are you saying we should change the law to allow that? Because it’s not currently legal.