PoliBlog: A Rough Draft of my Thoughts » Depressing (Torture, the Legality Thereof and the Glib Reactions of Some)

As I peruse the net this morning, I am more than a little depressed by two memes that are appearing in some rightward circles (I am noting it mostly on Facebook and in some blog comments, but also in posts). They are as follows:

1) (And I started noting this one yesterday and it isn’t wholly new): it if doesn’t leave a physical mark, it’s not torture. Somebody on radio or TV must be spouting this one, because I keep reading variations of it. First off, this utterly discounts the fact that a major portion of torture is psychological. It is all about getting into someone’s head. Further, various legal definitions of torture specifically include the idea of mental or psychological suffering.

Here’s the definition of torture from the UN Convention Against Torture, signed and praised by Ronald Reagan¹ (and ratified by the US Senate):

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Please note: “physical or mental.” And how waterboarding doesn’t fit that definition is beyond me. The procedure is controlled drowning (not “simulated” drowning) and is designed to make the recipient fear for his life.

Also, under US law (TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 113C > § 2340) the definition of torture notes “mental pain” twice.

The notion that torture is only about physical pain that leaves a lasting mark is problematic at best (to put it mildly).

2) And this one is new to today in the post-Mancow-gets-waterboarded world: the idea that if waterboarding were torture, then people wouldn’t be volunteering to do it. While I hardly want to stake claims on the experience of one talk radio host, those making such claims are ignoring the fact Erich Muller (aka “Mancow”) said the following after only lasting 6-7 seconds:

“It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,”Mancow said, likening it to a time when he nearly drowned as a child. “It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back…It was instantaneous…and I don’t want to say this: absolutely torture.”

“I wanted to prove it wasn’t torture,” Mancow said. “They cut off our heads, we put water on their face…I got voted to do this but I really thought ‘I’m going to laugh this off.’ “

Of course, the obvious retort to the whole issue here is that a lot of blowhards think it isn’t a big deal until, as Mancow found out, it is done to them.

The real test (if we are going to go by what people will volunteer for), by the way, of whether this is torture isn’t if someone is willing, in very controlled circumstances, to undergo one brief pour of water. The real test is whether, after the event, someone is willing to sign on for imprisonment+sleep deprivation/other “enhanced interrogation techniques”+182 more waterboardings.

A nice combo of both the “it doesn’t leave a mark” idea from #1 and the “if it torture, why are people volunteering?” ideas cane be found via Donald Douglas:

It’s easy to see why Muller would gladly agree to have water poured over his face? He wouldn’t be permanently maimed. He’d still have all of his fingernails, not to mention his fingers. No one would be gouging his eyes, nor slicing off his tongue. His arms would not be pressed into a wood-shredder.

Nice standards for the behavior of the US government: no eye-gouging and no permanent maiming. Oh, and never mind the law as cited above.

Douglas also stays classy by calling Muller a name that questions his manhood in the title of the post (i.e., the Muller simply wasn’t tough enough).

And, BTW, I am not arguing that because Reagan did it, it automatically means it is good. However, there is so much Reagan worship by Republicans at the moment, it is worth noting that he signed a treaty that outlaws what many of them are currently pushing as good policy. [↩]

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Hume's Ghost

'And, yes, waterboarding, “walling,” sleep deprivation, and the other techniques that the CIA used remind me of things depicted on Fear Factor.'

Well, they remind me of things that torturers have done to their victim, as I noted in my previous comment. "Walling" specifically reminds me of two of the men who were "interrogated" to death at Bagram, as that was part of the abuse they suffered.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international...

I'm also reminded of black Americans being waterboarded in the Jim Crow south (and the Mississippi Supreme Court calling it "a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country.")

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily...

These are the things that spring to mind for me, not game shows or episodes of Jackass.
Steven L. Taylor

Your definition seems to be "it isn't torture if people would do it on TV for money." However, to restate what I have already said, but you have not really answered: if the money was good enough you could get people to go on TV and have fingernails pulled out, pinkies chopped off and even limbs removed. Does that mean that those thing aren't torture?

Again: the torture comes about because of lack of control and imprisonment, because of helplessness and fear. When Mancow was waterboard he knew that as soon as he dropped his toy cow it woul be over with, he would be safe and he could go out to eat or go home and go to bed. When a prisoner is waterboarded there is no control, no guarantee that the process will ever stop. And even once it stops, there is no guarantee that it won't start again without notice.
Max Lybbert

Yes, I've recognized the difference between being a reality show contestant or a trainee versus being a detainee.

However, going off of the definition of torture being "something so inhumane as to be banned for being inhumane" then it seems that even in a reality show setting with prize money on the line people would not willfully submit to actual torture. What makes it difficult to find contestants willing to go up against the rack for prize money? Answer: the very fact that the rack is so inhumane that people will not volunteer for it under any circumstances; and it is this fact that makes it torture.
Steven L. Taylor

There is a difference between willfully submitting to a temporarily difficult situation in a controlled environment with the possibility of leaving the event with money in your pocket as a result versus being indefinitely held, in a situation totally outside your control, that may never end and isn't just subjugation to one or two discreet techniques, but repeated exposure to any number of them.

Part of what makes waterboarding torture is the circumstances under which it is administered.

I suspect most people would be willing to have their fingernails yanked off for $1,000,000. Indeed, a lot of people would allow their hand to be cut off for the right sum of cash. That doesn't mean, however, that subjecting prisoners to that type of treatment wouldn't be, even under your definition, torture.

Your reality show comparisons are really quite poor, because they do not take into consideration the totality of the given experience.
Max Lybbert

I'm being glib, but about something other than torture.

That is, I honestly believe torture is a terrible thing, and not only should we not engage in it under any circumstances, but we shouldn't look the other way when others engage in it; and we definitely can't keep our hands clean by handing people over to other governments knowing that they'll be tortured by somebody other than us. Torture is about as evil as slavery.

I remember some news organization "fact checking" President Bush's claim that the US was not involved in torture. They decided the statement was true only if you define torture very narrowly as the worst or harshest kind of activities. But if torture is defined to include things that are not "the worst" or "the harshest" kind of activity, it's hard to see why it should be banned. Torture is banned because it is inhumane, so logically only inhumane things can be torture. Uncomfortable things, or unpleasant things, or nauseating things aren't torture.

When the so-called "torture debate" began years ago, the stated issue was "torture, good or bad?" but the real issue was "does this qualify as torture? does this other thing?" And since many people hadn't given much thought to the definition of torture they assumed that this was a new debate. However, US courts had some experience trying to determine if certain actions crossed the line. And there are two important parts to their rulings: whether physical/mental pain/suffering occurred (versus apprehension, panic, etc.) and whether there was a specific intent to cause physical/mental pain/suffering.

Instead of going into lengthy detail about these rulings, I'll simply note that (1) CIA and special forces are commonly put through the "harsh interrogation" techniques in question and state that they do not cause severe physical/mental pain/suffering, (2) the CIA interrogators did not have a specific intent to cause physical/mental pain/suffering (cf. Holder's recent dancing around the question of whether these techniques actually cause pain http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjZkNGZiOD... ).

And, yes, waterboarding, "walling," sleep deprivation, and the other techniques that the CIA used remind me of things depicted on Fear Factor. So, yes, I've responded by glibly asking about the kinds of things shown on Fear Factor. If waterboarding is torture, what about being buried with Madagascar cockroaches? What about "dietary manipulation" in the form of eating horse guts? My point isn't that we should adopt these other techniques, but that "torture" implies something so inhumane that nobody would ever volunteer for it. Torture is defined as the worst form of inhumane treatment; not simply treatment that makes a large group of people squeamish. Defining it as including more than that weakens the prohibition on torture.
Steven L. Taylor

Clearly there are multiple sources for these ideas. It just sometimes strikes me that a particular notion, often with very similar wording, will appear at multiple places at once making me thing that some media outlet in the source.

Back the reality show argument, don't you think that perhaps you are being a bit glib about the whole thing and not taking the totality of the issues into account? Recognizing that you do not agree with me, I would wonder how you deal with the fact that we really aren't just talking about a single incidence of waterboarding, so that the whole reality show/YouTube video thing doesn't really create a comparable situation.
Max Lybbert

I realize you don't agree with the arguments. I only wanted to add to the possible provenance of the arguments (namely, that the first argument sounds a lot like Bybee's legal memos, and that the second was floated in 2024).
Steven L. Taylor

if people would do it on a reality TV show it's not torture.

When people are willing to undergo these treatments along with being imprisoned for an indefinite amount of time (years at least, possibly life, but maybe not--who knows?) with nothing to show for it at the end of the process, then I will take that argument seriously.

And one suspect that one could find any manner of videos of any number of things on the internet if one where to go looking. The existence said things hardly equates to justification of their usage by the state against persons in its custody.
Max Lybbert

1) (And I started noting this one yesterday and it isn’t wholly new): is if doesn’t leave a physical mark, it’s not torture. Somebody on radio or TV must be spouting this one, because I keep reading variations of it.

I don't listen to the radio (preferring podcasts and CDs) and I stopped watching most news on TV due to the fact that they are generally wrong on issues I know about, so I lost confidence in their ability to report on issues I don't know about ( http://michaelcrichton.com/speech-whyspeculate.... : "Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. ... You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. ... You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the 'wet streets cause rain' stories. ... In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. ... [W]hen it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.").

Anyhow, I believe this arguemtn comes from the actual content of the Bybee memos, since they mention the legal definition of torture requires severe physical suffering or severe mental suffering, and state that waterboarding causes panic but not severe mental suffering.

2) And this one is new today in the post-Mancow-gets-waterboarded world: the idea that if waterboarding were torture, then people wouldn’t be volunteering to do it.

The gist of this argument is what underlies my beliefs on the matter: if people would do it on a reality TV show it's not torture. And I understand that you can find videos on Myspace of other (less famous) people being voluntarily waterboarded. Interestingly you won't find video of people being voluntarily placed on the rack, hit with a cattle prod, electrocuted in sensitive areas, etc. So I wouldn't classify this as a new argument ( http://hotair.com/archives/2007/10/29/too-good-... ).
Richard Scott Nokes

I had not meant the questions to be sarcastic -- both were ideas I had heard bandied about by others (not me, of course).

Re-reading my post, I can see how it could have been read as snarky faux-questions. They probably needed more preamble.
Steven L. Taylor

Scott,

I will confess that my response was more antagonistic than it should have been. However, noting that a particular argument is annoying should hardly be an argument-ender.

I can understand why you would not like "ludicrous"-- but in all honesty, I find the whole SERE-based counter to complaints about prisoner mistreatment to be problematic to point of being, in fact, ludicrous for reasons stated above. In terms of debate, you are free to try and convince me otherwise. I recognize, however, that you likely have a very different view.

Quite honestly I found yours questions to have a sarcastic tone, and as such they struck me as unserious. The subtext to me was basically: wouldn't it be silly to sue those presidents? and therefore the whole objection to these techniques is silly. I apologize if you actually were wondering if I supported such lawsuits (the nature of the questions led me to assume that you didn't actually expect an answer, or that you thought the questions would make me reevaluate my position somehow). The answer is no, I do not support such lawsuits, because there is, in my mind, a fundamental difference between voluntarily entering into the armed services and voluntarily going through training and the treatment of prisoners, even if some of the exact same procedures are used.

And again, I find the "our soldiers have been waterboarded by our government" to be a highly problematic justification to US using such techniques on prisoners because, as noted above, the reason we are training our soldiers is to help them withstand mistreatment by the enemy.

And in terms of questions asked, you avoided mine about a foreign government using these techniques on one of out soldiers...

At any rate, it was not my intention to suggest that you were an idiot or a jerk.
Richard Scott Nokes

Your characterization of my questions as "ludicrous," "annoying," and "unserious" perhaps suggest there is no room for reasoned debate. The subtext here is something like, "You either see it my way, or you're a jerk and an idiot."

Might I offer the suggestion that it is possible for someone to disagree with your position without being any of the above?
nevrdull

that's a nonsensical question, richard.
SERE is part of the training for these soldiers. by extension, this is a part of their job, and as such they probably know what is going to happen. and since they all agreed to be subjected to these training conditions, i don't see any grounds for legal action.
apart from that, I think it's time to stop trying make comparisons between SERE (as part of a training procedure) and waterboarding (as part of, what ultimately is a criminal procedure, albeit a very flawed one).
so no, richard- no on both questions.
Steven L. Taylor

Scott,

In all honesty I find the SERE training argument to be ludicrous.

First: they are being trained to withstand being tortured based on techniques used by enemies. Again: they are being trained to resist torture based on techniques used by various dictatorships. I know I am being strident here, but I have heard the SERE training thing before and I am to the point that I find it highly annoying because it is an apples and oranges comparisons.

Second: there is a rather substantial difference between training in a controlled environment in which one otherwise knows that one is safe and being a prisoner subjected to repeated treatments whilst also being subjected to a variety of other "enhanced interrogation techniques".
As such, find your questions to be unserious.

Here's a question: if a US pilot was shot down over North Korea and the North Koreans subjected him to the techniques we are discussion: sleep deprivation, stress positions, being slammed a against a wall and waterboarded multiple times, would this be considered acceptable? Or would we call it what it is: torture.
Richard Scott Nokes

I was once in a conversation with three men who had just come out of SERE training, in which they were discussing being waterboarded and wondered (half-jokingly, I think) if they would be able to sue the military were waterboarding ever deemed to be torture. Given this post, I am curious:

1.) Would you support a lawsuit by SERE-trained military personnel?
2.) Would you support the legal prosecution of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, all three of whom had American citizens waterboarded as part of SERE training during their stints as Commander-in-Chief?
Hume\\’s Ghost

I wrote this once and clicked post but it dissappeared, if this ends up duplicating the post, my apologies in advance. I had written that:

Darius Rejali has noted that "clean torture" has been used for some time now precisely so that the torturer can attack the credibility of the victim. "See, no marks?"

http://www.slate.com/id/2213959/

And Andrew Sullivan has written several posts about how the Nazis themselves came up with "enhanced interrogations" that left no marks.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily...

And the Soviets used sleep deprivation - something which has been recognized since at least the Middle Ages as torture - to fabricate false confessions. (Forced standing was also a favorite of theirs.)

http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/12/tormentu...

It becomes more difficult to claims such tactics as harmless or not torture when we see them done by regimes we have long disdained.
Hume's Ghost

Darius Rejali has noted that "clean torture" has a long tradition, and is used precisely so that the torturer can attack the credibility of the victim. "See, no marks."

http://www.slate.com/id/2213959/

Andrew Sullivan has also written a number of posts about the Nazis themselves having come up with no marks "enhanced interrogation."

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily...

And the Soviets were notorious for using sleep deprivation - which has been known as a torture since at least the Middle Ages when it was called tormentum insoniae - to fabricate false confessions.

http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/12/tormentu...
Brett

@11B40

Were the Gitmo graduates who returned to their Jihad non-combatants while they were in American custody. I would say no.

This would assume that we know that all the detainees at Gitmo were combatants when captured. This cannot be stated for certain, insofar as we don't seem to have the evidence to convict them of such in a court of law. Besides, I would even argue that any terrorists captured in Afghanistan are not combatants, insofar as there was no declaration of war and Al Qaeda is not a military force run by a state, and there is no "battlefield" in the traditional sense. Instead, I would say that they are criminals operating outside the legal bounds of recognized warfare, rather than combatants participating in a "legitimate" armed action.

In this sense, "combatant" should not be used as a common term for someone who is fighting, but a LEGAL TERM for a enemy captured during a legally recognized war, rather than a fake "war" engaged against a concept rather than an enemy state. As such, I would argue that in the legal sense, all of the detainees at Guantanomo Bay never were combatants. When the Bush administration began calling detainees at Gitmo "combatants" they were engaging in legal obfuscation about the true nature of those people being held in custody.
11B40

Greetings: especially Steven L. Taylor

I think that where our views diverge is that I don't see war as being comparable to any other human endeavor. I'd like to pass along a couple of parables that I "drummed" into my new infantrymen back when I was so involved. Feel free to pass them along to any West Pointers you come across.

Parable A: The POW Calculus

1) You don't ever want to fight anyone twice;

2) Some POWs may have useful information;

3) Capture, relocation and detention of POWs
requires the use of scarce resources.

If I catch them, I'll do the math.

Parable B: Proper Targeting

Two young riflemen were having the age-old philosophical discussion about where to shoot those who would oppose them. One was a "head-shooter"; the other preferred the "center-mass" (torso). The head-shooter asserted that if you hit him, he's done. The center-mass guy liked the larger target area. As they were going back and forth, their Platoon Sergeant came by."Hey, Sarge," called out the head-shooter, "where do you like to shoot the bad guys?"

"In the back," he replied.

As many as you can, as often as you can, anywhere and any way you can.

Another issue is your reliance on this "non-combatant" status. Your analysis seems to rely on an objectively observable condition, while mine includes an unobservable mental state. Were the Gitmo graduates who returned to their Jihad non-combatants while they were in American custody. I would say no. They were just without much capacity. Not long ago, a female Al-Qaeda operative was taken into custody and turned over to American forces for interrogation during which she managed to snatch up a weapon and turn it on those around her. At what point was she and was she not a non-combatant.

An elemental part of making war effectively is understanding your enemy. Jihadis do not share your concerns about "civilized" warfare. They believe they are pleasing their god by doing everything and anything they can to harm or kill those who do not believe in the idiocy that is islam.

But, bottom line, what galls me most is the implicit idea that American, defending their country and their fellow citizens, are such defective human beings, that anyone who comes into their control is in danger of being sadistically abused or killed to fulfill their perverse desires. This makes me think that people who believe this don't get around battlefields very often.
Steven L. Taylor

I don’t think that my parents (both now deceased) were aware of their liability in this regard.

I fear I miss the joke. Unless you are really comparing, even jokingly, to getting in trouble as a youngster to being waterboarded or otherwise interrogated in an "enhanced" fashion.

How would taking control of another human being through force of arms not create some degree of mental pain?

The issue becomes how one treats a prisoner once in custody. This is no small issue. Clearly there are circumstances under which is legally and morally permissible to apprehend someone. Likewise, there are legally recognizable circumstances under which you can kill them (like on the battlefield) or even maim them (if you were trying to kill them and weren't successful).

The distinction and issue at hand is how one treats individuals in non-combat circumstances. This is not a new issue, by the way. A friend of mine who attended West Point was pointing out to me just the other day how proper treatment of prisoners was drummed into him and his fellow cadets.
11B40

Greetings:

I don't think that my parents (both now deceased) were aware of their liability in this regard. But, (a little more seriously) would taking even a lawful combatant prisoner not meet this definition? How would taking control of another human being through force of arms not create some degree of mental pain?

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Taylor As I peruse the net this morning, I am more than a little depressed by two memes that are appearing in some rightward circles (I am noting it mostly on Facebook and in some blog comments, but also in posts). They are as follows: 1) (And I started noting this one yesterday and it isn’t wholly new): it if doesn’t leave a physical mark, it’s not torture. Somebody on radio or TV must be spouting this one, because I keep reading variations of it. First off, this utterly discounts the fact that a major portion of torture is psychological. It is all about getting into someone’s head. Further, various legal definitions of torture specifically include the idea of mental or psychological suffering. Here’s the definition of torture from the UN Convention Against Torture, signed and praised by Ronald Reagan¹ (and ratified by the US Senate): For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. Please note: “physical or mental.” And how waterboarding doesn’t fit that definition is beyond me. The procedure is controlled drowning (not “simulated” drowning) and is designed to make the recipient fear for his life. Also, under US law (TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 113C > § 2340) the definition of torture notes “mental pain” twice. The notion that torture is only about physical pain that leaves a lasting mark is problematic at best (to put it mildly). 2) And this one is new to today in the post-Mancow-gets-waterboarded world: the idea that if waterboarding were torture, then people wouldn’t be volunteering to do it. While I hardly want to stake claims on the experience of one talk radio host, those making such claims are ignoring the fact Erich Muller (aka “Mancow”) said the following after only lasting 6-7 seconds: “It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,”Mancow said, likening it to a time when he nearly drowned as a child. “It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back…It was instantaneous…and I don’t want to say this: absolutely torture.” “I wanted to prove it wasn’t torture,” Mancow said. “They cut off our heads, we put water on their face…I got voted to do this but I really thought ‘I’m going to laugh this off.’ “ Of course, the obvious retort to the whole issue here is that a lot of blowhards think it isn’t a big deal until, as Mancow found out, it is done to them. The real test (if we are going to go by what people will volunteer for), by the way, of whether this is torture isn’t if someone is willing, in very controlled circumstances, to undergo one brief pour of water. The real test is whether, after the event, someone is willing to sign on for imprisonment+sleep deprivation/other “enhanced interrogation techniques”+182 more waterboardings. A nice combo of both the “it doesn’t leave a mark” idea from #1 and the “if it torture, why are people volunteering?” ideas cane be found via Donald Douglas: It’s easy to see why Muller would gladly agree to have water poured over his face? He wouldn’t be permanently maimed. He’d still have all of his fingernails, not to mention his fingers. No one would be gouging his eyes, nor slicing off his tongue. His arms would not be pressed into a wood-shredder. Nice standards for the behavior of the US government: no eye-gouging and no permanent maiming. Oh, and never mind the law as cited above. Douglas also stays classy by calling Muller a name that questions his manhood in the title of the post (i.e., the Muller simply wasn’t tough enough). And, BTW, I am not arguing that because Reagan did it, it automatically means it is good. However, there is so much Reagan worship by Republicans at the moment, it is worth noting that he signed a treaty that outlaws what many of them are currently pushing as good policy. [↩] Filed under: Uncategorized \|Click here to leave a comment \| View Comments \| Hume's Ghost 'And, yes, waterboarding, “walling,” sleep deprivation, and the other techniques that the CIA used remind me of things depicted on Fear Factor.' Well, they remind me of things that torturers have done to their victim, as I noted in my previous comment. "Walling" specifically reminds me of two of the men who were "interrogated" to death at Bagram, as that was part of the abuse they suffered. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international... I'm also reminded of black Americans being waterboarded in the Jim Crow south (and the Mississippi Supreme Court calling it "a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country.") http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily... These are the things that spring to mind for me, not game shows or episodes of Jackass. Steven L. Taylor Your definition seems to be "it isn't torture if people would do it on TV for money." However, to restate what I have already said, but you have not really answered: if the money was good enough you could get people to go on TV and have fingernails pulled out, pinkies chopped off and even limbs removed. Does that mean that those thing aren't torture? Again: the torture comes about because of lack of control and imprisonment, because of helplessness and fear. When Mancow was waterboard he knew that as soon as he dropped his toy cow it woul be over with, he would be safe and he could go out to eat or go home and go to bed. When a prisoner is waterboarded there is no control, no guarantee that the process will ever stop. And even once it stops, there is no guarantee that it won't start again without notice. Max Lybbert Yes, I've recognized the difference between being a reality show contestant or a trainee versus being a detainee. However, going off of the definition of torture being "something so inhumane as to be banned for being inhumane" then it seems that even in a reality show setting with prize money on the line people would not willfully submit to actual torture. What makes it difficult to find contestants willing to go up against the rack for prize money? Answer: the very fact that the rack is so inhumane that people will not volunteer for it under any circumstances; and it is this fact that makes it torture. Steven L. Taylor There is a difference between willfully submitting to a temporarily difficult situation in a controlled environment with the possibility of leaving the event with money in your pocket as a result versus being indefinitely held, in a situation totally outside your control, that may never end and isn't just subjugation to one or two discreet techniques, but repeated exposure to any number of them. Part of what makes waterboarding torture is the circumstances under which it is administered. I suspect most people would be willing to have their fingernails yanked off for $1,000,000. Indeed, a lot of people would allow their hand to be cut off for the right sum of cash. That doesn't mean, however, that subjecting prisoners to that type of treatment wouldn't be, even under your definition, torture. Your reality show comparisons are really quite poor, because they do not take into consideration the totality of the given experience. Max Lybbert I'm being glib, but about something other than torture. That is, I honestly believe torture is a terrible thing, and not only should we not engage in it under any circumstances, but we shouldn't look the other way when others engage in it; and we definitely can't keep our hands clean by handing people over to other governments knowing that they'll be tortured by somebody other than us. Torture is about as evil as slavery. I remember some news organization "fact checking" President Bush's claim that the US was not involved in torture. They decided the statement was true only if you define torture very narrowly as the worst or harshest kind of activities. But if torture is defined to include things that are not "the worst" or "the harshest" kind of activity, it's hard to see why it should be banned. Torture is banned because it is inhumane, so logically only inhumane things can be torture. Uncomfortable things, or unpleasant things, or nauseating things aren't torture. When the so-called "torture debate" began years ago, the stated issue was "torture, good or bad?" but the real issue was "does this qualify as torture? does this other thing?" And since many people hadn't given much thought to the definition of torture they assumed that this was a new debate. However, US courts had some experience trying to determine if certain actions crossed the line. And there are two important parts to their rulings: whether physical/mental pain/suffering occurred (versus apprehension, panic, etc.) and whether there was a specific intent to cause physical/mental pain/suffering. Instead of going into lengthy detail about these rulings, I'll simply note that (1) CIA and special forces are commonly put through the "harsh interrogation" techniques in question and state that they do not cause severe physical/mental pain/suffering, (2) the CIA interrogators did not have a specific intent to cause physical/mental pain/suffering (cf. Holder's recent dancing around the question of whether these techniques actually cause pain http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjZkNGZiOD... ). And, yes, waterboarding, "walling," sleep deprivation, and the other techniques that the CIA used remind me of things depicted on Fear Factor. So, yes, I've responded by glibly asking about the kinds of things shown on Fear Factor. If waterboarding is torture, what about being buried with Madagascar cockroaches? What about "dietary manipulation" in the form of eating horse guts? My point isn't that we should adopt these other techniques, but that "torture" implies something so inhumane that nobody would ever volunteer for it. Torture is defined as the worst form of inhumane treatment; not simply treatment that makes a large group of people squeamish. Defining it as including more than that weakens the prohibition on torture. Steven L. Taylor Clearly there are multiple sources for these ideas. It just sometimes strikes me that a particular notion, often with very similar wording, will appear at multiple places at once making me thing that some media outlet in the source. Back the reality show argument, don't you think that perhaps you are being a bit glib about the whole thing and not taking the totality of the issues into account? Recognizing that you do not agree with me, I would wonder how you deal with the fact that we really aren't just talking about a single incidence of waterboarding, so that the whole reality show/YouTube video thing doesn't really create a comparable situation. Max Lybbert I realize you don't agree with the arguments. I only wanted to add to the possible provenance of the arguments (namely, that the first argument sounds a lot like Bybee's legal memos, and that the second was floated in 2024). Steven L. Taylor if people would do it on a reality TV show it's not torture. When people are willing to undergo these treatments along with being imprisoned for an indefinite amount of time (years at least, possibly life, but maybe not--who knows?) with nothing to show for it at the end of the process, then I will take that argument seriously. And one suspect that one could find any manner of videos of any number of things on the internet if one where to go looking. The existence said things hardly equates to justification of their usage by the state against persons in its custody. Max Lybbert 1) (And I started noting this one yesterday and it isn’t wholly new): is if doesn’t leave a physical mark, it’s not torture. Somebody on radio or TV must be spouting this one, because I keep reading variations of it. I don't listen to the radio (preferring podcasts and CDs) and I stopped watching most news on TV due to the fact that they are generally wrong on issues I know about, so I lost confidence in their ability to report on issues I don't know about ( http://michaelcrichton.com/speech-whyspeculate.... : "Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. ... You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. ... You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the 'wet streets cause rain' stories. ... In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. ... [W]hen it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia."). Anyhow, I believe this arguemtn comes from the actual content of the Bybee memos, since they mention the legal definition of torture requires severe physical suffering or severe mental suffering, and state that waterboarding causes panic but not severe mental suffering. 2) And this one is new today in the post-Mancow-gets-waterboarded world: the idea that if waterboarding were torture, then people wouldn’t be volunteering to do it. The gist of this argument is what underlies my beliefs on the matter: if people would do it on a reality TV show it's not torture. And I understand that you can find videos on Myspace of other (less famous) people being voluntarily waterboarded. Interestingly you won't find video of people being voluntarily placed on the rack, hit with a cattle prod, electrocuted in sensitive areas, etc. So I wouldn't classify this as a new argument ( http://hotair.com/archives/2007/10/29/too-good-... ). Richard Scott Nokes I had not meant the questions to be sarcastic -- both were ideas I had heard bandied about by others (not me, of course). Re-reading my post, I can see how it could have been read as snarky faux-questions. They probably needed more preamble. Steven L. Taylor Scott, I will confess that my response was more antagonistic than it should have been. However, noting that a particular argument is annoying should hardly be an argument-ender. I can understand why you would not like "ludicrous"-- but in all honesty, I find the whole SERE-based counter to complaints about prisoner mistreatment to be problematic to point of being, in fact, ludicrous for reasons stated above. In terms of debate, you are free to try and convince me otherwise. I recognize, however, that you likely have a very different view. Quite honestly I found yours questions to have a sarcastic tone, and as such they struck me as unserious. The subtext to me was basically: wouldn't it be silly to sue those presidents? and therefore the whole objection to these techniques is silly. I apologize if you actually were wondering if I supported such lawsuits (the nature of the questions led me to assume that you didn't actually expect an answer, or that you thought the questions would make me reevaluate my position somehow). The answer is no, I do not support such lawsuits, because there is, in my mind, a fundamental difference between voluntarily entering into the armed services and voluntarily going through training and the treatment of prisoners, even if some of the exact same procedures are used. And again, I find the "our soldiers have been waterboarded by our government" to be a highly problematic justification to US using such techniques on prisoners because, as noted above, the reason we are training our soldiers is to help them withstand mistreatment by the enemy. And in terms of questions asked, you avoided mine about a foreign government using these techniques on one of out soldiers... At any rate, it was not my intention to suggest that you were an idiot or a jerk. Richard Scott Nokes Your characterization of my questions as "ludicrous," "annoying," and "unserious" perhaps suggest there is no room for reasoned debate. The subtext here is something like, "You either see it my way, or you're a jerk and an idiot." Might I offer the suggestion that it is possible for someone to disagree with your position without being any of the above? nevrdull that's a nonsensical question, richard. SERE is part of the training for these soldiers. by extension, this is a part of their job, and as such they probably know what is going to happen. and since they all agreed to be subjected to these training conditions, i don't see any grounds for legal action. apart from that, I think it's time to stop trying make comparisons between SERE (as part of a training procedure) and waterboarding (as part of, what ultimately is a criminal procedure, albeit a very flawed one). so no, richard- no on both questions. Steven L. Taylor Scott, In all honesty I find the SERE training argument to be ludicrous. First: they are being trained to withstand being tortured based on techniques used by enemies. Again: they are being trained to resist torture based on techniques used by various dictatorships. I know I am being strident here, but I have heard the SERE training thing before and I am to the point that I find it highly annoying because it is an apples and oranges comparisons. Second: there is a rather substantial difference between training in a controlled environment in which one otherwise knows that one is safe and being a prisoner subjected to repeated treatments whilst also being subjected to a variety of other "enhanced interrogation techniques". As such, find your questions to be unserious. Here's a question: if a US pilot was shot down over North Korea and the North Koreans subjected him to the techniques we are discussion: sleep deprivation, stress positions, being slammed a against a wall and waterboarded multiple times, would this be considered acceptable? Or would we call it what it is: torture. Richard Scott Nokes I was once in a conversation with three men who had just come out of SERE training, in which they were discussing being waterboarded and wondered (half-jokingly, I think) if they would be able to sue the military were waterboarding ever deemed to be torture. Given this post, I am curious: 1.) Would you support a lawsuit by SERE-trained military personnel? 2.) Would you support the legal prosecution of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, all three of whom had American citizens waterboarded as part of SERE training during their stints as Commander-in-Chief? Hume\\’s Ghost I wrote this once and clicked post but it dissappeared, if this ends up duplicating the post, my apologies in advance. I had written that: Darius Rejali has noted that "clean torture" has been used for some time now precisely so that the torturer can attack the credibility of the victim. "See, no marks?" http://www.slate.com/id/2213959/ And Andrew Sullivan has written several posts about how the Nazis themselves came up with "enhanced interrogations" that left no marks. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily... And the Soviets used sleep deprivation - something which has been recognized since at least the Middle Ages as torture - to fabricate false confessions. (Forced standing was also a favorite of theirs.) http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/12/tormentu... It becomes more difficult to claims such tactics as harmless or not torture when we see them done by regimes we have long disdained. Hume's Ghost Darius Rejali has noted that "clean torture" has a long tradition, and is used precisely so that the torturer can attack the credibility of the victim. "See, no marks." http://www.slate.com/id/2213959/ Andrew Sullivan has also written a number of posts about the Nazis themselves having come up with no marks "enhanced interrogation." http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily... And the Soviets were notorious for using sleep deprivation - which has been known as a torture since at least the Middle Ages when it was called tormentum insoniae - to fabricate false confessions. http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/12/tormentu... Brett @11B40 Were the Gitmo graduates who returned to their Jihad non-combatants while they were in American custody. I would say no. This would assume that we know that all the detainees at Gitmo were combatants when captured. This cannot be stated for certain, insofar as we don't seem to have the evidence to convict them of such in a court of law. Besides, I would even argue that any terrorists captured in Afghanistan are not combatants, insofar as there was no declaration of war and Al Qaeda is not a military force run by a state, and there is no "battlefield" in the traditional sense. Instead, I would say that they are criminals operating outside the legal bounds of recognized warfare, rather than combatants participating in a "legitimate" armed action. In this sense, "combatant" should not be used as a common term for someone who is fighting, but a LEGAL TERM for a enemy captured during a legally recognized war, rather than a fake "war" engaged against a concept rather than an enemy state. As such, I would argue that in the legal sense, all of the detainees at Guantanomo Bay never were combatants. When the Bush administration began calling detainees at Gitmo "combatants" they were engaging in legal obfuscation about the true nature of those people being held in custody. 11B40 Greetings: especially Steven L. Taylor I think that where our views diverge is that I don't see war as being comparable to any other human endeavor. I'd like to pass along a couple of parables that I "drummed" into my new infantrymen back when I was so involved. Feel free to pass them along to any West Pointers you come across. Parable A: The POW Calculus 1) You don't ever want to fight anyone twice; 2) Some POWs may have useful information; 3) Capture, relocation and detention of POWs requires the use of scarce resources. If I catch them, I'll do the math. Parable B: Proper Targeting Two young riflemen were having the age-old philosophical discussion about where to shoot those who would oppose them. One was a "head-shooter"; the other preferred the "center-mass" (torso). The head-shooter asserted that if you hit him, he's done. The center-mass guy liked the larger target area. As they were going back and forth, their Platoon Sergeant came by."Hey, Sarge," called out the head-shooter, "where do you like to shoot the bad guys?" "In the back," he replied. As many as you can, as often as you can, anywhere and any way you can. Another issue is your reliance on this "non-combatant" status. Your analysis seems to rely on an objectively observable condition, while mine includes an unobservable mental state. Were the Gitmo graduates who returned to their Jihad non-combatants while they were in American custody. I would say no. They were just without much capacity. Not long ago, a female Al-Qaeda operative was taken into custody and turned over to American forces for interrogation during which she managed to snatch up a weapon and turn it on those around her. At what point was she and was she not a non-combatant. An elemental part of making war effectively is understanding your enemy. Jihadis do not share your concerns about "civilized" warfare. They believe they are pleasing their god by doing everything and anything they can to harm or kill those who do not believe in the idiocy that is islam. But, bottom line, what galls me most is the implicit idea that American, defending their country and their fellow citizens, are such defective human beings, that anyone who comes into their control is in danger of being sadistically abused or killed to fulfill their perverse desires. This makes me think that people who believe this don't get around battlefields very often. Steven L. Taylor I don’t think that my parents (both now deceased) were aware of their liability in this regard. I fear I miss the joke. Unless you are really comparing, even jokingly, to getting in trouble as a youngster to being waterboarded or otherwise interrogated in an "enhanced" fashion. How would taking control of another human being through force of arms not create some degree of mental pain? The issue becomes how one treats a prisoner once in custody. This is no small issue. Clearly there are circumstances under which is legally and morally permissible to apprehend someone. Likewise, there are legally recognizable circumstances under which you can kill them (like on the battlefield) or even maim them (if you were trying to kill them and weren't successful). The distinction and issue at hand is how one treats individuals in non-combat circumstances. This is not a new issue, by the way. A friend of mine who attended West Point was pointing out to me just the other day how proper treatment of prisoners was drummed into him and his fellow cadets. 11B40 Greetings: I don't think that my parents (both now deceased) were aware of their liability in this regard. But, (a little more seriously) would taking even a lawful combatant prisoner not meet this definition? How would taking control of another human being through force of arms not create some degree of mental pain? blog comments powered by Disqus	blog advertising is good for you Visitors Since 2/15/03 Powered by Disqus Sterling Jewelry Time Clocks Food Equipment Office Machines Cash Registers Ricoh Fax Machines IBM Typewriters Copy Machines Office Supplies Office Equipment Blogroll --- Advertisement Advertisement