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No, but that doesnt mean that we shouldnt use it if needed, Torture is such a relative term, My mother swears that severe tickling is a form of torture!
No, but that doesnt mean that we shouldnt use it if needed, Torture is such a relative term, My mother swears that severe tickling is a form of torture!
I've heard exactly the same--that unrelenting, ongoing tickling is torture....
And just yersterday, I heard a radio interview in which the speaker suggested that people could be "conditioned" to resist waterboarding..in essence, since it is not designed to KILL, and its effects don't LAST, the real effect of it is extreme mental duress---one "thinks" he's about to drown. Mental training (said the speaker) can permit one to 'get through' waterboarding without 'breaking'....
Obviously, waterboarding is coercive. It's unpleasant, and it's of questionable ethics. But I still say there's a world of difference between that and extracting fingernails, or burning with an acetylene torch, or gouging out an eye, etc..
ALL coercion is ugly. But, to use the classic example, if YOU had a suspect in custody, and you KNEW that HE knew when, and how, thousands of innocent lives were about to be ended, and his info could help you PREVENT this, would you just "ask" him---or would you try sterner measures? Would you still consider "waterboarding" to be unacceptably brutal? It's an ugly world...
I'm not sure I put too much stock in our modern definition of "torture". After all, we live in a society in which a hand clapped on a shoulder, during the heat of an argument, is legally defined as "assault"...and can be prosecuted as such. I'm not sure I'd classify a "shoulder clap" or an "elbow grab" in the samr category as an attack with a baseball bat, But legally, they're all "assault". Torture, too, it seems to me, has LOTS of broad categories...
It's only torture for the subject.
Do we, as a nation, condone it?
How about this one:
Should we, as a _________ nation, condone it?
(fill in the adjective you think would best apply in the blank)
I've heard exactly the same--that unrelenting, ongoing tickling is torture....
And just yersterday, I heard a radio interview in which the speaker suggested that people could be "conditioned" to resist waterboarding..in essence, since it is not designed to KILL, and its effects don't LAST, the real effect of it is extreme mental duress---one "thinks" he's about to drown. Mental training (said the speaker) can permit one to 'get through' waterboarding without 'breaking'....
Obviously, waterboarding is coercive. It's unpleasant, and it's of questionable ethics. But I still say there's a world of difference between that and extracting fingernails, or burning with an acetylene torch, or gouging out an eye, etc..
ALL coercion is ugly. But, to use the classic example, if YOU had a suspect in custody, and you KNEW that HE knew when, and how, thousands of innocent lives were about to be ended, and his info could help you PREVENT this, would you just "ask" him---or would you try sterner measures? Would you still consider "waterboarding" to be unacceptably brutal? It's an ugly world...
It's all relative...pulling out only one fingernail isn't as bad as pulling all five.
Chopping off one finger isn't as bad as chopping off the hand.
Poking out one eye with a pencil isn't as bad as poking out both eyes.
Sounds like good ole Gestapo tactics and rationale.
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