# Why the big deal over torture? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 7, 2009, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663 "2009-05-07T16:10:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/141 "2009-05-08T21:06:31Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > Nothing to explain. It’s uncomfortable and humiliating, but not severe enough to count as torture in my books. What are your books and why should we rely on them, instead of the FBI and CIA’s manuals, which describe this as torture? ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/142 "2009-05-08T21:09:42Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > Nothing to explain. It’s uncomfortable and humiliating, but not severe enough to count as torture in my books. Some things become more serious in context than when they stand alone. So it’s not \*just \*about being forced to sit in their own urine and feces–it’s that additional discomfort and shaming on top of everything else. Emphasis on the shaming. Not all torture is physical–again, I bring up the examples of prisoners smeared with feces or forced to masturbate. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/143 "2009-05-08T21:11:49Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > Nothing to explain. It’s uncomfortable and humiliating, but not severe enough to count as torture in my books. So what if I shove my penis into your asshole and thrust back and forth until I ejaculate? It’s uncomfortable and humiliating, but it doesn’t cause agonizing pain, and so it can’t be torture, right? ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/144 "2009-05-08T22:25:29Z")
> [@yorick73](#): > > From the army field manual [FM 34-52 Chapter 1](http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/policy/army/fm/fm34-52/chapter1.htm) > The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind is prohibited by law and is neither authorized nor. condoned by the US Government. \*\*Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.\*\*However, the use of force is not to be confused with psychological ploys, verbal trickery, or other nonviolent and noncoercive ruses used by the interrogator in questioning hesitant or uncooperative sources. Where to begin. For starters, this is the US Army field manual for interrogating prisoners of war, not the CIA manual for interrogating ‘enemy combatants’ which is what is really being discussed here. I haven’t seen anyone talking about the US Army torturing Iraqi Army POWs on the road to Baghdad before “Mission Accomplished.” Even so, I’ve bolded a part of it for you that you might want to peruse over again; it explains why the US Army thinks torture is a poor technique. Then there is your claim which you seem to think this supports: > [@yorick73](#): > > The Dems have done a good job of defining down torture. I don’t believe anything that was done constitutes torture. But it sure made the captives think we were capable of getting a lot worse. Thanks to the uproar, interrogators cannot even insult their captors. Why those devious democrats, they got into such an uproar that they invented time travel to go back to the Reagan era to prevent the insulting of captives. You might want to look at the publishing date of the manual. FM 34-52 HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY Washington, DC, 8 May 1987 ---
**Author:** ![ManiacMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b782af/32.png) [@ManiacMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ManiacMan)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/145 "2009-05-08T23:28:04Z")
Waterboarding really isn’t torture imo. If I was captured by my enemy I would simply do what I needed to do to avoid being 'boarded. I don’t have any training in how to survive and escape and evade, but common sense would tell me that you do what you need to do to survive. If that means giving out some tidbits or even the whole nine yards of information than so be it. Afterall, how stupid would my comrades have to be to follow “the plan” after one of their own was captured? Pretty damn stupid! But then again radical muslim captors would not waste their time with 'boarding. More likely they would push an old brick wall over on me…guess that makes me _the_ martyr. The individuals who received this “torture” were just being tough guys. They probably had themselves convinced that they would get an extra 30 virgins if they died as a matyr during the process. Oops jokes on them! Isn’t dying as a martyr something prayed for by radical muslims? Seriously, why are they being such pussies? Totally willing to blow themselves up and scores of other people…but ooooh noes don’t get them wet! :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/146 "2009-05-08T23:33:21Z")
> [@ManiacMan](#): > > …The individuals who received this “torture” were just being tough guys… What an extraordinary insight you have! May one ask how you came by such penetrating perception? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2009, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/147 "2009-05-08T23:38:49Z")
> [@ManiacMan](#): > > Waterboarding really isn’t torture imo. If I was captured by my enemy I would simply do what I needed to do to avoid being 'boarded. What makes you think you CAN avoid it ? And regardless of your opinion, it IS torture, for all the reasons previously discussed. > [@ManiacMan](#): > > The individuals who received this “torture” were just being tough guys. You mean like the tough guys who cooperated with us, and we tortured them anyway ? Or the ones who were just sold to us by their enemies and couldn’t tell us about their terrorist friends because they didn’t have any ? > [@ManiacMan](#): > > Seriously, why are they being such pussies? Totally willing to blow themselves up and scores of other people…but ooooh noes don’t get them wet! > > :rolleyes: And how well do you think you would stand up to being drowned ? That’s what waterboarding is, you know. NO ONE stands up to this sort of treatment. ---
**Author:** ![ManiacMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b782af/32.png) [@ManiacMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ManiacMan)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2009, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/148 "2009-05-09T00:09:09Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > What makes you think you CAN avoid it ? > > And regardless of your opinion, it IS torture, for all the reasons previously discussed. > > You mean like the tough guys who cooperated with us, and we tortured them anyway ? Or the ones who were just sold to us by their enemies and couldn’t tell us about their terrorist friends because they didn’t have any ? > > And how well do you think you would stand up to being drowned ? That’s what waterboarding is, you know. NO ONE stands up to this sort of treatment. Well weren’t the detainees administered the “technique” as a final step in the interrogation process? So it would have been avoidable if they would have spilled the beans. Can you offer a cite that validates your claim on people that cooperated and were also waterboarded? Highly unlikely imo. I wouldn’t have to go through waterboarding because I would cooperate with my captors. My comrades would be smart enough to change the intel that I would possess. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2009, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/149 "2009-05-09T00:15:13Z")
They were cooperating. The FBI was interrogating them. Then orders came down that the President had decided they should be tortured, so the FBI interrogators were excluded and the CIA torturers took over. It was the “final step” in the interrogation process in the sense that the intelligence gathering phase ended and non-intelligence-gathering torture began instead. If you think they were just being tough guys, why in the world do you think KSM was waterboarded 183 times? Isn’t that pretty much proof that we weren’t torturing him for information, we were torturing him because he was a bad guy who deserved to be tortured? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2009, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/150 "2009-05-09T00:48:22Z")
I find the alternative explanation more plausible: In its eagerness to believe in thier own awesomeness, they wildly exaggerated the significance of the “detainees”. Convined that the victims withheld vital information, the raised the bar. (IIRC, there is some documentation supporting this, that the interrogators reported that they had gotten all there was to get, but orders came from “on high” to get tough, convinced that they were, in fact, “tough guys” who were withstanding. Point of fact, they were creampuffs who spilled the beans instanter…) So, how do you tell the difference between someone who is witholding vital informaton, and someone who has none to give? Well, you use the old Viet Nam standby for determining who qualifies as enemy personnel: if he runs, he’s a Viet Cong. If he stands still, he is a very disciplined Viet Cong. ---
**Author:** ![ManiacMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b782af/32.png) [@ManiacMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ManiacMan)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2009, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/151 "2009-05-09T01:13:12Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > They were cooperating. The FBI was interrogating them. Then orders came down that the President had decided they should be tortured, so the FBI interrogators were excluded and the CIA torturers took over. It was the “final step” in the interrogation process in the sense that the intelligence gathering phase ended and non-intelligence-gathering torture began instead. > > If you think they were just being tough guys, why in the world do you think KSM was waterboarded 183 times? Isn’t that pretty much proof that we weren’t torturing him for information, we were torturing him because he was a bad guy who deserved to be tortured? How can you definitively say that we were torturing him because he was a bad guy? Oh that’s right you can’t…definitively…say that. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2009, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/152 "2009-05-09T01:26:18Z")
> [@ManiacMan](#): > > Well weren’t the detainees administered the “technique” as a final step in the interrogation process? So it would have been avoidable if they would have spilled the beans. How can they “spill the beans” if they have none ? And as said, we tortured the ones who talked anyway. > [@ManiacMan](#): > > Can you offer a cite that validates your claim on people that cooperated and were also waterboarded? Highly unlikely imo. Covered by **Lemur866** ; they told us the truth, we didn’t want the truth so we tortured them into telling us the lies we wanted. > [@ManiacMan](#): > > I wouldn’t have to go through waterboarding because I would cooperate with my captors. And they’d torture you anyway, just as we did our victims. Either to get you to confess to things you didn’t do or know, or simply for the sheer fun of it. > [@ManiacMan](#): > > How can you definitively say that we were torturing him because he was a bad guy? Oh that’s right you can’t…definitively…say that. True; it’s as likely or more we were doing so out of sheer sadism. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2009, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/153 "2009-05-09T01:28:27Z")
> [@ManiacMan](#): > > I wouldn’t have to go through waterboarding because I would cooperate with my captors. My comrades would be smart enough to change the intel that I would possess. This has to be one of the most - I don’t even think there’s a word to describe it. I’m thinking infinite monkeys typing. Why would you care if you were waterboarded since you don’t think its torture? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2009, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/154 "2009-05-09T01:33:01Z")
> [@ManiacMan](#): > > How can you definitively say that we were torturing him because he was a bad guy? Oh that’s right you can’t…definitively…say that. :rolleyes: You know, I’m totally fed up with the right wing embrace of torture. It makes me fucking puke. You think history will vindicate you assholes? You’re going to look like the guys who stood in front of the schoolhouse doors and declared that niggers would never enter. You’re going to look like scared little babies, pissing yourself with terror over some Pashtun teenager. I hope you all like liberalism and socialism, because thanks to you tards that’s what we’re going to get for the next 20 years. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2009, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/155 "2009-05-09T01:40:09Z")
Oh, no, not the briar patch! Please, have mercy, anything but that briar patch!.. ---
**Author:** ![ManiacMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b782af/32.png) [@ManiacMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ManiacMan)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2009, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/156 "2009-05-09T01:46:47Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > :rolleyes: > > You know, I’m totally fed up with the right wing embrace of torture. It makes me fucking puke. You think history will vindicate you assholes? > > You’re going to look like the guys who stood in front of the schoolhouse doors and declared that niggers would never enter. You’re going to look like scared little babies, pissing yourself with terror over some Pashtun teenager. > > I hope you all like liberalism and socialism, because thanks to you tards that’s what we’re going to get for the next 20 years. Torture has been used by both ‘democrats’ and ‘republicans’, so try not to break a leg getting off that high horse you got there. Every Democracy has engaged in “torture” at one time or another and that’s a fact. Alot of politicians and bureacrats have wriggled and split hairs over what is and what isn’t legal about waterboarding. Let the Supreme Court deal with it because it seems to me that the Bush administration felt justified giving orders to waterboard to the CIA after making “sure” it was “legal” with a team of slimy lawyers. Now a new president is in the house and ohhh let me guess his team of slimy lawyers will make memos that make it illegal…pfft. Bunch of bullshit and people can do is WHINE. And watch the n-word. I find it disgusting. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2009, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/157 "2009-05-09T01:47:39Z")
I fucking enrages me that so many so-called advocates of freedom have lined up in favor of FUCKING TORTURE. You know, like how the gooks tortured our POWs back in Nam? It fucking boggles my fucking mind. Great job standing up for freedom, assholes. Great job standing up against tyranny, fuckheads. Great job bringing democracy and freedom to the world, you festering dolts. You know what fucking pisses me off? That we’re having an argument over whether our goverment should be allowed to torture people. What the fuck? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you people? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2009, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/158 "2009-05-09T01:49:25Z")
> [@ManiacMan](#): > > And watch the n-word. I find it disgusting. So the word nigger is disgusting, yet you don’t give two shits about the word “torture”. And you’re happy with the Nuremberg defense of the FUCKING NAZIS–hey, the President said it was legal, so what’s the big deal? We were just following orders! A lawyer signed it and everything! ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2009, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/159 "2009-05-09T01:52:18Z")
> [@ManiacMan](#): > > How can you definitively say that we were torturing him because he was a bad guy? Oh that’s right you can’t…definitively…say that. Yup: Here’s what Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, [told The Associated Press:](http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/19/ex-bush-official-guantanamo-bay-innocent/) > [@](#): > > “It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance,” Wilkerson wrote in the blog. He said intelligence analysts hoped to gather “sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified.” Goodness or badness, guilt or innocence had nothing to do with harsh interrogation. The mere misfortune of being detained by Americans was sufficient to guarantee suffering. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2009, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663/160 "2009-05-09T01:53:17Z")
> [@ManiacMan](#): > > Torture has been used by both ‘democrats’ and ‘republicans’, so try not to break a leg getting off that high horse you got there. I’m a fucking registered REpublican, if you want to know. I get it–you think I only care about torture because I think the torture was ordered by Republicans. Because that’s how you and your kind roll, you and your kind would only care if Democrats ordered it. Turns out, I’m against torture because I’m a free American patriot, not a forelock tugging serf. See, I’m against tyranny and for freedom. Torture is tyranny. Is that so hard for a person like you to understand? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-big-deal-over-torture/495663.md?page=9)