Be fair, Diogenes. It’s not for jollies, it’s for crowd control. Just like tear gas, rubber bullets and fire hoses.
Not that that makes it a good idea.
And now we’re Klingons.
Wrong, unless you are going to claim that ALL police action against rioters is torture. It’s how the device is used that determines if it’s torture, not the device itself. If we tied someone down and used this weapon on them, it would be torture. Your definition of torture would include all conventional weapons as well as any physical force by any police anywere.
It’s simply impossible to have a rational discussion with you about anything related to the Iraq war, and that’s sad. You’re generally one of the posters around here I enjoy debating with the most…
We are not the police, we are the invaders. I do not concede that we have any authority to put down riots in Iraq. If we don’t like the insurgency, we have the option to leave, not to torture.
Torture, by definition, is the deliberate infliction of physical pain. In this case, the device does not seem to have the ability to discriminate between who is a “terrorist” and who is not. The potential to cause grievous physical pain to innocent people, particularly to children and infants, renders the use of the device for crowd control idefensible, IMO.
One could make exactly the same argument agains tear gas. The “agony ray” horrifies (some of) us chiefly because it’s a new thing.
You are simply stating that, IYHO, you don’t think US soldiers have the authority to set foot in Iraiq. That’s another debate.
Torture and pain may be considered similar in a verfnacular analysis, but not in a legal analysis. Otherwise, we’d have banned tear gas, pepper spray, and painful arm holds long ago. Or is this another one of those things that courts have gotten wrong? 
If we are going to use a narrow, vernacular definition of “torture = pain”, then enjoy yourself (no double-entdre intended). I don’t think you’ll be able to interest many other posters in that debate.
I do make the same argument against tear gas.
Well, at least you’re consistent when you’re wrong.
And, btw, I’m not sure if this “agony ray” is so unconstrained as you imply. It is certainly more controllable than tear gas. I’ve seen demonstrations of this type of weapon on TV, and you aim it similiarly to the way you’d aim a large flashlight-- on specific person you wish to affect. It’s much, much more similar to a gun than to tear gas.
Even if it were used, for instance, not by our troops in Iraq, but by police officers trying to put down the post-Rodney-King L.A. riots?
I think it may be the case that the more-lethal methods currently available may ultimately be more effective in this case, for the reasons that I tried to touch on in the OP. A hundred Americans “in the trenches” weilding riot sticks and rubber bullets with Iraqi security forces sends a very different message then a faceless GI in an armored vehicle causing pain with a technology seen as magical. Rubber bullets and tear gas may cause more immediate casualties, but if they don’t induce as much terror they may make things smoother in the longer run.
Can we stop calling this the “Agony Ray”. Kinda spoils the well…
I understand that Rumsfeld is going to rename it the “Patriot Ray”. 
But cell phones and microwave ovens are perfectly safe. No one with half a brain could possibly believe that 300Ghz radiation could cause testicular cancer. :dubious:
Might I suggest ‘The Freedom and Democracy Ray’?
I propose “Happy Fun Ray!”
Might even be marketable to the S&M crowd . . .
And you thought people playing with laser pointers in movie theaters were annoying…
Tell that to these folks.
Dude, get some help.
“Freedom Fryer!”
If this is true then it’s different from the impression I had of a device that simply cooked a large area. If it’s really this controllable and localized then it sounds like something more akin to a taser. I think it would be an ok measure for self-defense, but I don’t like the idea of using pain to manipulate crowds which are not immediately threatening, or to use generalized measures which could hurt the innocent.
It might sound trite but I really am serious about not wanting to cause pain to children.
Here’s Global Security’s writeup on Raytheon’s Vehicle Mounted Active Denial System
Some highlights:
There’s a lovely, not to be missed, mockup of the unit mounted on a vehicle at the bottom of the link. I wonder what an RPG would do to that 4 X 4’ chunk of plywood stuck to the top of the truck?
The link didn’t mention any testing on children. Surely no American child would be used as a Guinea Pig for this. I’ll bet they’ll just watch carefully the first few times they fire it at Iraqi kids, and hope for the best.
“Active Denial System”? Jeez, who thinks these things up?
“95-GHz millimeter waves” – what are those, microwaves? Infrared?