On Torture
UN Convention on Torture
Part I
Article 1
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.
(from the Human Rights declaration section on torture )
It (The CAT) also forbids activities which do not rise to the level of torture, but which constitute cruel or degrading treatment.
and (for a victim of torture)
if the complaint is proven, receive compensation, including full medical treatment and payments to survivors if the victim dies as a result of torture.
It will be most interesting to see how the most recent debate on torture, as applied to the detainees at Guantanamo Bay turns out. I'm pretty certain that if I were the person on site, trying to find out if there were immediate plans to execute another large scale terrorist attack on the US, I personally would go farther than our soldiers and CIA did as far as "enhanced interrogation techniques" are concerned, but that's just me. If you put my family, friends, or countrymen at risk, I'm likely to go all Jack Bauer on ya. What can I say, I'm a barbarian at heart.
I looked at the UN Convention on Torture, and it is so broad and vague, perhaps purposefully so, as to make finding a dividing line between torture and non-torture nearly impossible. Words such as degrading, intimidating, threatening, cruel, severe, etc. really don't give us much to go on. Reading the Army field manual on interrogations leads me to believe that all we're allowed to do is ask prisoners questions until they're too tired to answer, or we're tired of taking notes, or something like that. We can bribe them with little amenities, such as coffee or cigarettes, though. How nice.
So, the Army methods described in the Field Manual are definitely not torture. I didn't search too hard for it, but I'm guessing the official CIA interrogation manual is about the same. Government stuff tends to be pretty much "copy & paste" anyway. There was a somewhat interesting paragraph in there that said, in effect "if the prisoner knows that you can't hurt him, threatening to hurt him does no good." This principle applies in raising children, too. But I digress.
I understand the danger inherent in more specificity. If we say action #1 is torture and action #2 is not, anything not on the list we can say is not torture as well, and humans tend to be extremely imaginative when it comes to to ways to inflict torment on others.
I think, though, that the defining sentence in the UN conventions is this one regarding victims of torture. "...if the complaint is proven, receive compensation, including full medical treatment and payments to survivors if the victim dies as a result of torture."
It seems reasonably clear to me that real torture results in some sort of permanent injury, either mental or physical, that can possibly be remedied by professional treatment. In the case of some of these jihadis, though, I'm not sure how you'd know whether they were insane to begin with, or driven that way by mental anguish after capture.
Sidebar - I have this mental movie of a congressional committee interrogating the commander of Guantanamo Bay in 2003, after a group of terrorists has crashed some more airliners into Los Angeles (an actual plot which was discovered and thwarted by the "enhanced" techniques), killing thousands.
Congressman: So, why were you unable to get information about this pending attack from the planner that you had in custody?
General X: Well, we asked him nicely a number of times, and he just refused to talk about it. We even gave him cigarettes and allowed him to call his wife and kids to talk for a while, but all he'd say to us about it was 'you'll find out soon.'
I don't know all the answers on the torture question, but I've got a few guidelines of my own:
1. Being stripped naked and forced to walk down the hallway. Not torture, especially if you're quite proud of your "package."
2. Being stripped naked and forced into a cell with Bubba, former linebacker for The Bears. Torture.
3. Having loud, mind-bending Rock & Roll music played at high volume keeping you awake all night. Not torture, especially if you lived in the dorms in college.
4. Having polka music played at any volume at any time. Torture.
5. Being put in a cell with one or more caterpillers. Not torture. As Timon and Poomba used to say, "slimy, yet satisfying."
6. Being put in a cell with spiders, scorpions, bees or wasps. Torture, unless you're secretly sympathetic with Stoker's Renfield.
7. Being waterboarded. I've inhaled more water on a bad day waterskiing. Only torture if you're not allowed to suck down a cold brewski afterwards.
8. Threatening to rape and kill Abdul's wife. Not torture. Have you seen that cow with her burqa off?
9. Threatened with attack dogs. Torture. I still have nightmares about the fangs on that Chihuahua.
10. Threatened at gunpoint. After eight years of eating prison food? Are you kidding? Pull the stinking trigger!
Part I
Article 1
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.
(from the Human Rights declaration section on torture )
It (The CAT) also forbids activities which do not rise to the level of torture, but which constitute cruel or degrading treatment.
and (for a victim of torture)
if the complaint is proven, receive compensation, including full medical treatment and payments to survivors if the victim dies as a result of torture.
It will be most interesting to see how the most recent debate on torture, as applied to the detainees at Guantanamo Bay turns out. I'm pretty certain that if I were the person on site, trying to find out if there were immediate plans to execute another large scale terrorist attack on the US, I personally would go farther than our soldiers and CIA did as far as "enhanced interrogation techniques" are concerned, but that's just me. If you put my family, friends, or countrymen at risk, I'm likely to go all Jack Bauer on ya. What can I say, I'm a barbarian at heart.
I looked at the UN Convention on Torture, and it is so broad and vague, perhaps purposefully so, as to make finding a dividing line between torture and non-torture nearly impossible. Words such as degrading, intimidating, threatening, cruel, severe, etc. really don't give us much to go on. Reading the Army field manual on interrogations leads me to believe that all we're allowed to do is ask prisoners questions until they're too tired to answer, or we're tired of taking notes, or something like that. We can bribe them with little amenities, such as coffee or cigarettes, though. How nice.
So, the Army methods described in the Field Manual are definitely not torture. I didn't search too hard for it, but I'm guessing the official CIA interrogation manual is about the same. Government stuff tends to be pretty much "copy & paste" anyway. There was a somewhat interesting paragraph in there that said, in effect "if the prisoner knows that you can't hurt him, threatening to hurt him does no good." This principle applies in raising children, too. But I digress.
I understand the danger inherent in more specificity. If we say action #1 is torture and action #2 is not, anything not on the list we can say is not torture as well, and humans tend to be extremely imaginative when it comes to to ways to inflict torment on others.
I think, though, that the defining sentence in the UN conventions is this one regarding victims of torture. "...if the complaint is proven, receive compensation, including full medical treatment and payments to survivors if the victim dies as a result of torture."
It seems reasonably clear to me that real torture results in some sort of permanent injury, either mental or physical, that can possibly be remedied by professional treatment. In the case of some of these jihadis, though, I'm not sure how you'd know whether they were insane to begin with, or driven that way by mental anguish after capture.
Sidebar - I have this mental movie of a congressional committee interrogating the commander of Guantanamo Bay in 2003, after a group of terrorists has crashed some more airliners into Los Angeles (an actual plot which was discovered and thwarted by the "enhanced" techniques), killing thousands.
Congressman: So, why were you unable to get information about this pending attack from the planner that you had in custody?
General X: Well, we asked him nicely a number of times, and he just refused to talk about it. We even gave him cigarettes and allowed him to call his wife and kids to talk for a while, but all he'd say to us about it was 'you'll find out soon.'
I don't know all the answers on the torture question, but I've got a few guidelines of my own:
1. Being stripped naked and forced to walk down the hallway. Not torture, especially if you're quite proud of your "package."
2. Being stripped naked and forced into a cell with Bubba, former linebacker for The Bears. Torture.
3. Having loud, mind-bending Rock & Roll music played at high volume keeping you awake all night. Not torture, especially if you lived in the dorms in college.
4. Having polka music played at any volume at any time. Torture.
5. Being put in a cell with one or more caterpillers. Not torture. As Timon and Poomba used to say, "slimy, yet satisfying."
6. Being put in a cell with spiders, scorpions, bees or wasps. Torture, unless you're secretly sympathetic with Stoker's Renfield.
7. Being waterboarded. I've inhaled more water on a bad day waterskiing. Only torture if you're not allowed to suck down a cold brewski afterwards.
8. Threatening to rape and kill Abdul's wife. Not torture. Have you seen that cow with her burqa off?
9. Threatened with attack dogs. Torture. I still have nightmares about the fangs on that Chihuahua.
10. Threatened at gunpoint. After eight years of eating prison food? Are you kidding? Pull the stinking trigger!