Rebranding torture

From The New York Times' Steven Lee Myers, "Veto of Bill on C.I.A. Tactics Affirms Bush's Legacy":

Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the agency from using interrogation methods like waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning and that has been the subject of intense criticism at home and abroad. Many such techniques are prohibited by the military and law enforcement agencies. ...

The bill Mr. Bush vetoed would have limited all American interrogators to techniques allowed in the Army field manual on interrogation, which prohibits physical force against prisoners.

The debate has left the C.I.A. at odds with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies, whose officials have testified that harsh interrogation methods are either unnecessary or counterproductive. The agency’s director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, issued a statement to employees after Mr. Bush’s veto defending the program as legal, saying that the Army field manual did not “exhaust the universe of lawful interrogation techniques.”

Myers' article suggests that the war of words over torture is being won by President Bush and Gen. Hayden and other torture advocates. They've succeeded in introducing the newspeak necessary to make the unthinkable thinkable, and to ensure that opponents of torture -- of God damned torture -- are perceived as soft, weak and flaccid. Just look at Myers' opening paragraph:

President Bush on Saturday further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers, using his veto to shut down a Congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence Agency's latitude to subject terrorism suspects to harsh interrogation techniques.

Myers isn't reporting there, he's writing a resume and trying to jam in as many power words as he can to project strength. I doubt he realizes this. He probably just thinks he's simply reporting the facts of the matter -- you know, just printing what he's been told. How could that be wrong?

As a result of this newspeak, Myers uses a phrase common to most such articles, even though it didn't exist just a few years ago, referring to "interrogation methods like waterboarding."

"Waterboarding" is the new, re-branded name for what used to be called "water torture." You can see why the new term was necessary for proponents of the technique who wanted to argue that it's something other than torture.

Torture itself has been rebranded, of course, as "harsh interrogation techniques."

This sort of rebranding is only possible with the cooperation of journalists like Myers and his editors. Something like the following conversation has been happening in newsrooms across America:

REPORTER: The president vetoed Congress' ban on torture.

EDITOR: We can't call it "torture."

REPORTER: Why not?

EDITOR: Because the government says that torture isn't torture.

REPORTER: But these are established terms -- legal terms set down in the Geneva ...

EDITOR: It's controversial.

REPORTER: It was ratified as American law in 1955.

EDITOR: Yeah, well, now it's controversial. And we try to avoid controversy. So we don't say "torture" anymore.

REPORTER: So what do we say?

EDITOR: The government wants us to say "harsh interrogation techniques."

REPORTER: But isn't that controversial too? I mean, if some people still want to call torture "torture," then isn't calling it something else also controv ...

EDITOR: The government has asked us to call it that. We do what the government wants. That way, no controversy.

REPORTER: So if the government comes out and tells us that the rack isn't torture, we would just stop referring ...

EDITOR: Stretchboarding.

REPORTER: What?

EDITOR: We don't refer to it as "the rack" anymore. The government has asked us to call it "stretchboarding." Saying "the rack" would be controversial.

Makes me so proud to be a part of the free press.

Rebranding torture as "harsh interrogation techniques" doesn't alter the fundamental fact that such harsh techniques do nothing to keep a free people safe. They are useful for one and only one purpose, the purpose for which they were designed: extracting false confessions.

The torture debate is thus in an even more extreme category than the debate over other civil liberties which the Bush administration has argued are incompatible with keeping America safe. The standard rationale for convincing the complacent and timid to go along with such limitations on their rights and freedoms is always to say, "Hey, if you're innocent, you've got nothing to worry about." But innocence is, by definition, no protection against those eager and willing to extract false confessions. When arguing against the need for warrants for wiretapping, the Bush administration has suggested that we must change our laws to make us less free but more safe. When arguing that they should be allowed to ignore the prohibition against torture with impunity, the Bush administration is suggesting that we must change our laws to make us less free and less safe.

I really, really do not understand why that is viewed by anyone as a compelling argument.

Update: Media Bloodhound has more to say on Myers' NY Times article.

Comments

[MikhailBorg]

I think flogging is "Leather massgae therapy"

*draws breath to say something... then decides not to after all*

Let's see... list of tortures...

"American Idol" will now be referred to as "Televised Singing Competition"

[not_scottbot]

'if the only reason it's existence is not widely known is because the media doesn't care enough to ask'

This is a pretty American centric view - when the existence of various European secret facilities, ones where the rule of law had been suspended (leading to the reasonable suspicion that torture was also practiced there) became known, along with the flight numbers of the planes servicing this network, the European reaction led to either at least the European prisons being shut down, or more effective attempts at hiding their existence.

This is how much the debate has already shifted - Americans are starting to lose sight of the fact of how abhorrent torture truly is, and why it is normally hidden from view.

The same way that American images of war are carefully sanitized so as to not offend or shock or disturb - as is the burned corpses of a family who just happened to share a building with a high value target (ooops, not there - curses, foiled again - sorry about the mess) would actually lead to decent people calling for a halt to such senseless slaughter in their name.

Which would impact the bottom line.

[Monkay]

Always look on the bright side of life . . .

[hf]

They are useful for one and only one purpose, the purpose for which they were designed: extracting false confessions.

That's surely the conscious motive. But I strongly suspect that the subconscious motive is simply to dominate others and spread fear.

Um, no. Domination seems like the conscious motive.

When Iran replaced the Shah with the current theocrats, they evidently tortured a CIA agent to get a confession of the CIA's role in torture under the previous regime. The confession seems plausible. Certainly they believed it, because why else would they feel justified in using torture themselves? But they didn't do it to learn the truth. They already thought they knew the truth (justifiably, in this case). They did it to make the victim talk, to control him.

[Caravelle]

waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning

Wow, that actually makes me feel a lot better. I was somehow under the impression that waterboarding was a technique in which restrained prisoners were drowned. But it turns out, I guess, that really they're just restrained and then threatened. That hardly sounds like torture at all! Phew!

...or maybe, I suppose, it would be controversial to actually explicitly say what waterboarding is.... sigh...

I agree with David. "drowning" is not exactly what waterboarding is because it implies dying, but it's still closer than what "threatening with drowning" implies, i.e. people talking to you in a mean way.

Looking at the massive abuses of power in the Bush Administration, it was almost a relief to read about Eliot Spitzer, a classic meat-and-potatoes scandal about sex and hypocrisy.

Domination seems like the conscious motive.

I was suggesting that the torturers are engaging in massive self-denial about their motives and about the usefulness about the confessions. If they acknowledged to themselves that their true desire was to dominate, they would have to confront the immorality of their actions and of the whole enterprise.

[Froborr]

An additional thought about terrorism vs. warcrimes: one reason to focus punishment on the higher-ups for warcrimes and on the direct actors for terrorism is that warcrimes are very often systemic. While it seems likely that most of the Japanese soldiers in Nanking were willing participants in the mass rape and slaughter of thousands of women and young girls, many may have participated out of fear of the consequences if they showed reluctance. Certainly few or none of them joined the military with the intent of committing mass rape and slaughtering children. The environment in which they found themselves fostered barbaric violence, and ultimate responsibility for creating that environment lies in the upper echelons of the command chain. Not to mention, from a pragmatic point of view, that it'd be impossible to prosecute thousands of soldiers, but relatively easy to prosecute a dozen commanders.

A suicide bomber, on the other hand, acts alone or within a small group. There are certainly environmental factors (like most forms of violent crime, poverty increases the likelihood of terrorism), but at some point the bomber made a conscious decision to join an organization that exists to commit terrorist acts. They may not be able to leave once they join, true, but they chose to join knowing it would come to this. And, when it comes time to blow themselves up, they are not surrounded by an armed mob pressing them to do it.

[Jeff]

Looking at the massive abuses of power in the Bush Administration, it was almost a relief to read about Eliot Spitzer, a classic meat-and-potatoes scandal about sex and hypocrisy.

I got a [rueful] laugh from a Republican governor claiming it was time to get corruption and hypocrasy out of politics. A REPUBLICAN said this. It's toooooo rich!

[Caravelle]

hypocrasy

It's hypocrisy, people. It's funny how some words seem to get misspelled again and again while others don't. (tounge and flouride I've seen so much that at some point I thought that might actually be the real spelling)

I like "hypocracy" though, because it can be bastardized to mean "small government" :)

[Lauren]

Hippocracy would be government by horses.

[Froborr]

Or Hippocrates.

[MikhailBorg]

Hippocracy would be government by horses.

Ya bunch of yahoos.

[Froborr]

Mikhail:

Ow. The pain that pun caused in me is nothing short of brobdignagian.

[indifferent children]

Hypnocracy: Go back to sleep. Pay no attention to what your government is doing in your name.

[inge]

Tonio: I frequently run into conservatives who falsely claim that people who condemn U.S. torture are saying "we're just as bad as the terrorists."

I don't know a good refutation, because torture is a terror tactic. It has been said here and in other places that it does not work, but if the goal it to scare the populance, it seems to work OK.

Looking at it from a debate POV, I'd try to get around that argument, not confront it, because "I heard that someone said..." is a shield, not a target.

[Ursula L]

Tonio wrote:

I frequently run into conservatives who falsely claim that people who condemn U.S. torture are saying "we're just as bad as the terrorists."

The proper response to that seems, to me, to be "No, I think we ought to be better than the terrorists, and therefore shouldn't be committing terrorism."

We torture, we bomb civilians, we do all kinds of things that we'd call terrorism if anyone else did them to us. It's shameful. And you don't keep yourself from being a terrorist by arbitrarily labeling terrorism that you commit something else.

[LMM]

Also, a person who joins a legitimate military and then receives evil orders is in a very different position than somebody who knowingly joins a terrorist organization, I'd say.

I disagree. Someone in a legitimate military organization who receives evil orders and carries them out has, if anything, more moral culpability than a terrorist organization, particularly when that organization is affiliated with the US government. Terrorist organizations aren't expected to know any better. American soldiers most definitely should.

To blame terrorism on the foot-soldiers and war crimes on the generals automatically portrays the military in a positive light: government-sanctioned atrocities are the products of a few bad apples, whereas terrorist acts are the products of a vengeful culture. With fringe organizations (extreme pro-life organizations, or animal rights activists), this assumption may be accurate, but more generally, this has the effect of disenfranchising entire ethnic groups without access to a legitimate military. (Take the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for example. Using this reasoning, all Israeli acts of war can be blamed upon the heads of the Israeli government, while terrorist acts by Hamas, etc., are interperted as the responsibility of a large fraction of the Palestinian population. The net result is the sort of media bias commonly seen in the US today.)

The soldiers at Abu Grahb knew -- and know -- exactly what they were doing. Bushco may have encouraged it, the media may have ignored it -- but, ultimately, each and every one of them had the moral responsibility to refuse to participate. That they did not makes them every bit as morally culpable as any suicide bomber.

[LMM]

I frequently run into conservatives who falsely claim that people who condemn U.S. torture are saying "we're just as bad as the terrorists."

And if they were? If they were saying that the US were worse than the terrorists, would that make their condemnation of torture any less true?

I fail to see how this is a counter-argument against anything.

[Ursula L]

Also, a person who joins a legitimate military and then receives evil orders is in a very different position than somebody who knowingly joins a terrorist organization, I'd say.

Huh?

A military's job is terrorism and atrocity. That's what war is.

There are certain, very limited, situations where those things become necessary for stopping a much greater evil. But those situations are rare. And in either case, you're joining up to do damage to other human beings, and are responsible for that decision, and actions you commit as a result of that decision.

And if the foot soldiers aren't responsible for atrocities in a "legitimate military" does that mean my grandfather gets a posthumous pardon? And my grandmother was right about "victor's justice", where the foot-soldiers were held responsible, not because they should have been, but because they lost and the victors could do it if they wanted?

[Tonio]

I fail to see how this is a counter-argument against anything.

Of course it's not a counter-argument - they are simply trying to deflect legitimate criticism by questioning people's patriotism. It's a despicable tactic, and one that is hard to refute by logical argument.

[LMM]

they are simply trying to deflect legitimate criticism by questioning people's patriotism.

To torture is to prove to the world that we are barbarians. To question torture is merely to point this fact out.

So, I ask the torturers, why do *you* hate America?

[Monkay]

The word "fuck" is bleeped on The Daily Show, then cut to trailer for the latest torture-porn feature to hit the theaters; I can haz cognitive dissonance?

[Chris]

"We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it's 'obscene'!" - Col. Kurtz, "Apocalypse Now"

Reynard's post wins the thread.

[Chris]

I agree that any footsoldier has a responsibility to refuse to carry out evil orders. I'm willing to bet that the number of occasions on which a soldier would actually be put in front of a firing squad for doing that, in a modern western army, is minimal, so what is the risk. Heck, even the Nazis sometimes let soldiers back out of attacking civilian targets with no repercussions.

That's not to say that it's always easy to figure out what is an evil order. But hurting defenceless prisoners in any way whatsoever... that one should be a no-brainer.

[jamoche]

There's a line in one of Lois McMaster Bujold's books about a lecture given to new Barrayaran soldiers: "Illegal orders: how to spot them and what to do when given one" - given by a character who once took the blame for an illegal order that was given out in his name by one of his subordinates, an event that got him labelled a war criminal by their enemies. The implication is that they aren't so easy to spot, and even harder to protest once spotted.

[LMM]

The implication is that they aren't so easy to spot, and even harder to protest once spotted.

That might be true when the illegal orders are things like, "follow these directions down a one-way street (going the wrong direction)". But the question here is not illegality, but unjustifiable immorality. Waterboarding a subject, or shocking them, or making them roll in shit, is not remotely justifiable. This is not an issue with shades of gray in it. War crimes are illegal. If you're too far gone to see that, then you're not worth saving.

Protest isn't necessary. Refusal to act -- going AWOL, going to the media, even advocating (and committing) mutany -- is.

Soldiers are expected to give their lives in defense of this nation. The only difference here is that the enemies they need to protect us from happen to be their commanders.

[Jeff]

And if the foot soldiers aren't responsible for atrocities in a "legitimate military" does that mean my grandfather gets a posthumous pardon?

I'm not aware of "foot soldiers" being held for standard military operations. The whole point of My Lai was that it wasn't standard military operations -- and even there, it wasn't the soldiers who were put on trial, it was the commanders.

I don't know the circumstances of your grandfather, but was he truly a "foot soldier", and was he accused / convicted of war crimes?

[Ursula L]

I'm not aware of "foot soldiers" being held for standard military operations. The whole point of My Lai was that it wasn't standard military operations -- and even there, it wasn't the soldiers who were put on trial, it was the commanders.

I don't know the circumstances of your grandfather, but was he truly a "foot soldier", and was he accused / convicted of war crimes?

Not for standard military orders - but for military orders that were (later) deemed to be crimes against humanity. I don't know all the details, but German, WWII.

The standard he, and those like him, were held to is that "just following orders" is not an excuse. Yet I constantly see people saying that for US people who follow orders, it is an excuse.

Which makes me quite bitter. My family suffered quite a bit, being held accountable for the things my grandparent's generation did, following orders. Yet I considered the suffering to be a matter of justice - what was done was horribly wrong, and, beyond any punishment, there were going to be standards so it wouldn't happen again. The justification was that the standards they were held to would be the new universal standard - every person in a situation where they are given orders must judge whether the order is legal and moral, and refuse if it isn't, or be held accountable.

Now, the very nation that imposed those standards on my grandparents is holding people without trial, torturing, committing wars of agression - and excusing the people carrying out the acts, because, hey, they are just following orders.

[Dash]

Re waterboarding: the Helsinki Commission had a field hearing this last fall, at which Malcolm Nance, an expert on interrogation techniques (who has himself been waterboarded to within the legal limit) stated that waterboarding is indeed actual drowning--controlled drowning (competently controlled, I guess one hopes, although there are cases in North Korea, I think, where the victim actually died contrary to the intentions of the torturers)--but drowning. Water enters the lungs. Not, he emphasized, simulated drowning.

One of these two links will get you to his statement--possibly both:
http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/uniini/release.cfm?ArticleID=1562; the second one is too long to post as a URL, but you should be able to get to it by clicking here.

I believe the second link will also enable you to watch the video of the field hearing and to read the statements of each of the participants.

[Dash]

Tonio: I frequently run into conservatives who falsely claim that people who condemn U.S. torture are saying "we're just as bad as the terrorists." While I strongly disagree, I have no idea how to rebut that claim, other than to say that I don't want my country practicing torture no matter who else does it. Any suggestions?

Seems to me there are a couple of ways to go with this (and you've already gotten some good suggestions, so this is just in addition to those). First, you can try questioning their premise: "people who condemn U.S. torture are saying the we're just as bad as the terrorists."

(1) "What does it mean to be 'just as bad as the terrorists?' What specifically do people who condemn torture by the U.S. say? Let's deal with specific claims."
On the occasions when I've done this, the person who makes the claim throws up his/her hands and retreats. Something about asking for specifics that ends the argument when all the person wanted to do was say something bad about those who object to torture. You can then use the term "straw man." And checkmate. This assumes, of course, that they really don't want to discuss the matter. If they do, you can end up in a pretty productive discussion of what it means to be "as bad as the terrorists" and why torture is immoral.

(2) If they're Christian, you can always point out that Jesus said that looking at a woman lustfully was as bad as adultery. (He seems to have given women a pass in terms of looking at men lustfully.) So if looking at a woman lustfully is as bad as adultery, why isn't torture as bad as torture? Focus on the action, not the people. Torture is as bad as torture; Al Qaeda may be full of people who do a ton of other things, but that's not what we're talking about, and we're not trying to measure people on a scale of badness, but actions.

People who make the claim you describe are, although they're unaware of it, engaging in situation ethics (as they understand the term--not in its formal philosophical sense), and usually regard "situation ethics" as a sign of terrible secular humanist thinking. So pointing that out helps. As does the quote from Jesus. Jesus is always a good man to have backing you up. (Um, a good God. Um, a good Member of the Trinity. Well, you know.)

[Dash]

Ursula L: Now, the very nation that imposed those standards on my grandparents is holding people without trial, torturing, committing wars of aggression - and excusing the people carrying out the acts, because, hey, they are just following orders.

Very true--and very sad. At the risk of invoking Godwin's law, I have to say that, after spending some time trying to understand how ordinary Europeans (some of whom I'm related to and have met) could have bought into what the Nazis were offering (I've always feared that, if I were put in a similar situation, I'd fail the test), I found, to my horror, that, looking at my own American relatives' reactions to what was put into place after 9/11, I finally understood it.

Now, to avoid cries of horror, I don't claim that the circumstances are the same: I'm saying elements of the reactions--the refusal to look at what's going on, the insistence that the government knows best and that we will be told what it is good for us to be told, the conclusion that everything is OK if it protects us from some possible harm, the belief that desperate times call for desperate measures (in a bad way) and that if you're not doing anything wrong, you've nothing to worry about--are all there at some level. Curiously, it seems most prevalent among those who lived through WWII. I don't know if it's age or the habit of obedience learned early, or the assumption of American inherent virtue learned early, or what.

(I hope I haven't started the Thursday Flame War early. Didn't mean to. For those disposed to flame, I'll just remind you that these are my relatives I'm talking about. You probably haven't met them. They're probably not like yours. Yours are fine.)

[hf]

I was suggesting that the torturers are engaging in massive self-denial about their motives and about the usefulness about the confessions. If they acknowledged to themselves that their true desire was to dominate, they would have to confront the immorality of their actions and of the whole enterprise.

Sort of. Again, torturing people to make them talk because you think you already know the truth seems like the most common form of torture. They wouldn't use the word "domination", but they have no problem admitting they want to make the suspect/victim do something. The most obvious self-deception here has more to do with knowledge and uncertainty. Then we have the Abu Ghraib form of torture, which seems to begin after we establish the previous form as standard operating procedure. Here the domination seems open and unapologetic. Neither they nor the people at home openly saying we need to show Muslims who's boss have any moral problem with it. Their self-deception instead seems to obscure the common humanity of the victim and the torturer. They think it could never happen to people like them, or maybe they fear it could and find comfort in identifying themselves with the 'strong' torturer. Possibly you could change their attitude and convince them that torture should not exist by making them read this (warning: do not read). Or perhaps we should focus on allaying their vague and general fears of outsiders by showing them that strange, freakish people in the real world don't eat babies.

[hf]

I don't know if it's age or the habit of obedience learned early, or the assumption of American inherent virtue learned early, or what.

Hmm, we know that having children tends to increase so-called Right Wing Authoritarianism, probably because parents have more to fear. Education tends to decrease it (by a larger amount), probably because it shows you different people who don't eat babies. Possibly they just haven't had as many of those experiences? (This assumes of course that your anecdotal experience holds true.)

[Mark Z.]

Dash--

If they're Christian, you can always point out that Jesus said that looking at a woman lustfully was as bad as adultery. ... So if looking at a woman lustfully is as bad as adultery, why isn't torture as bad as torture?

Well said, but anyone who takes Jesus seriously would already oppose torture. The reason for this should be obvious.

And yes, it's exactly the kind of moral relativism that they're always complaining about. They don't notice because it doesn't involve penises, except possibly as a place to attach the jumper cables.

[Reynard]

Posted by Jeff: hypocrasy

Government by hypodermic needles?

[hapax]

hypocrasy

Change that to "hypo-crazy", and we're perilously close to "reality-based."

[Dan S.]

"hypocracy"

Government on the down low . . .

[Drak Pope]

This is a pretty American centric view - when the existence of various European secret facilities, ones where the rule of law had been suspended (leading to the reasonable suspicion that torture was also practiced there) became known, along with the flight numbers of the planes servicing this network, the European reaction led to either at least the European prisons being shut down, or more effective attempts at hiding their existence.

I wasn't talking about European secret prisons. I was talking about American secret prisons, which are not secret at all. The only reason that the government feels free to continue to behave the way it does is because the people ignore it. Sure, they bitched about the images coming about Abu Ghraib, but when it was time to vote they reelected the man who allowed it to continue and gave him a popular mandate to continue the very things they protested against. It's not fair to compare the U.S. to wartime Europe or the Soviet Union. In the latter cases, a great deal of effort went into concealing / suppressing what was going on from the media and the citizenry. The U.S. government does not even have to go through that much effort, since the media is so easily preoccupied by things like the Anna Nicole Smith baby saga and the equally tedious D.C. Madam saga that they can get away with quite a lot in almost open view.

[Dash]

Mark Z: . . . anyone who takes Jesus seriously would already oppose torture

True enough . . . by our definition of "taking Jesus seriously." But there are many people out there who think of themselves as taking Jesus seriously--and who do indeed take him seriously in their way--but who still give governments, specifically their own, an out for behavior that is otherwise forbidden. It can therefore work to point out that Jesus seems to take a position--in a verse they really like, no less--that goes against the "accusing us of torture is saying we're just as bad as Al Qaeda" argument.

[Caravelle]

Well said, but anyone who takes Jesus seriously would already oppose torture. The reason for this should be obvious.

No. Because the Crucifixion was a good thing ! It's the way He Saved us after all.

I'm pretty sure I saw this point of view expressed somewhere.

[Rosina]

David: "waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning"

Wow, that actually makes me feel a lot better. I was somehow under the impression that waterboarding was a technique in which restrained prisoners were drowned. But it turns out, I guess, that really they're just restrained and then threatened. That hardly sounds like torture at all! Phew!

In fact, threatening someone with death, by firing squad, or drowning, is quite definitely torture. Threatening to throw them out of a helicopter into the sea, for example. Just because the 'interrogator' does not intend to do it, the threat of death is a recognized use of torture (and I think actually prohibited as such in the Geneva rules).

Threats are not just woolly bits of harsh interrogation, although it is arguable that where interrogator and criminal share a culture where torture is not common practice, threatening to nail the suspect's ears to the floor might be treated by both as amusing hyperbolic repartee (though hard to explain in a court when the tape recording is played).

This is where I think I agree slightly with aunursa in the discussion elsewhere about the woman 'humiliating' the suspected Islamic terrorist. There is humiliation, but in itself the act is not threatening physical harm, or even prolonged psychological harm, so it probably is not legally torture. Of course the society that can condone such crass behaviour must be equally crass and deaf to all common humanity, particularly when its leaders and apologists claim for themselves a religious faith.

A similarly humiliating act carried out by a male, or the female accompanied by verbal threats of rape, would be torture, even if the rape does not happen. I think in mediaeval dungeons the Shewing of the Instruments, which allowed the victim's own imagination to start wondering about what would be done to him, would have been considered a very effective and efficient means of torture.

[Jesurgislac]

Rosina, smearing excrement onto a person isn't physical harm - babies do it to their mothers all the time! - but it is torture, when done by a guard to a prisoner. Arguing that because a woman can't rape a man it's not torture when a woman sexually humiliates a man or outrages his personal modesty, strikes me as a claim of really outrageous sexism. Men do, in fact, as much as women do, have a right to their modesty. (I think of my dad, oddly enough, in this context: I think of how he would react were a woman to treat him like this, when he was manacled to a chair and unable to protest or resist - and yeah, I say that's torture.)

Further, the UN Convention on Torture does in fact specify that torture can include mental harm rather than physical.

[Rosina]

Further, the UN Convention on Torture does in fact specify that torture can include mental harm rather than physical.

That was the point I was trying to make, but somewhere we must draw the line between what is mentally unpleasant, and what is mental harm in the sense of torture. I don't think it is in quite the same place as physical harm.

If I tell a prisoner he is a nasty piece of work who is bringing shame on his family and friends, that might hurt him psychologically but isn't torture (surely?) And he'll recover from the unpleasantness. So something more lasting must be meant by mental harm, unless you're never going to be able to question prisoners or even imprison them (which is unpleasant, after all).

If I punch a prisoner in the stomach and threaten to keep on doing it unless he talks (the threat can be non-verbal), I am torturing him, even if no permanent damage is inflicted and the pain dies away as quickly as the shame and humiliation of being called a nasty piece of work.

Arguing that because a woman can't rape a man it's not torture when a woman sexually humiliates a man or outrages his personal modesty, strikes me as a claim of really outrageous sexism.

I didn't actually mean that a woman humiliating a person is less serious than a man humiliating a person: my distinction is in the underlying threat. If the humiliation is accompanied by verbal or other threats of physical harm, including rape, then it is torture, regardless of the sex of the 'torturer'. And I am probably being a bit old fashioned in thinking that where a man commits a non-invasive sexual assault (like flashing or frotting) the 'threat' of actual physical/sexual assault is more tangible than if a woman commits the same acts against a man. But I wasn't actually giving women a free pass on humiliating prisoners. It might not be torture, but it damned well ought to be barred in the laws and rules of army etc of any civilized country - that it is in fact encouraged in Guantanamo, and supported by aunursa, shows that they are lacking in any claim to civilization.

Smearing excrement is - potentially - physically harmful. I would count it as a physical (rather than a mental) assault and include it in torture. Dogs (angry dogs) are a threat. Even if they are temporarily under control, the control rests with 'the enemy' and if he threatens to release them, to allow them to bite and savage, then it is the same as pointing a gun and threatening to shoot. Even if that threat is unstated.

[Caravelle]

Torture is one of those things that can't be defined because the boundaries between torture and not-torture are fuzzy. There are some acts where reasonable people will disagree. There are some acts that are acceptable in some context but that qualify as torture once they're used in a "harsh interrogation" setting. There are acts that do no physical damage at all but that can destroy people's minds. There are acts that sound innocuous when they're described and yet are terribly traumatizing to victims of them.

So really, finding hard-and-fast definitions of torture is pointless for us civilian individuals. This does not affect the definition in the Geneva Conventions, because like paleontologists who have to decide what animal was the first "bird", the UN has to draw the line somewhere, and saying that that line doesn't exactly jive with one's instinctive idea of what "torture" is is as pointless as saying Archaeopteryx shouldn't be called a bird because it had teeth.

The thing is we civilian individuals have to do is to abandon the idea that the problem is a specific set of acts. The problem is having coercive interrogations in the first place.
First, from the moment you are trying to make somebody talk when they don't want to you're forced into the logic of making them suffer. Forbidding certain actions will just make interrogators think of other, more creative ways of making people suffer without breaking the rules.
And second, whatever happens, the interrogations happen in an atmosphere where the victim is powerless to stop whatever the people do to them - and in that context, anything can be torture.

I can totally imagine a story of a guy imprisoned by Nazis or the KGB or whatever, who want him to talk, and do nothing else than lock him up and give him delicious chocolate cake. Every day. And the guy going completely nuts with anxiety (what are they playing at ? Does that mean they don't need my information and killed everybody ? Do they hope I'll end up liking them ? Is there something in the cake ? What's going on ???), ends up hating chocolate but they make him eat it anyway, ends up going raving mad...

Was that person tortured ? Yes. Is chocolate cake torture ? Uh... If the person hadn't gone insane, could he be said to have been tortured ? Beats me.
The issue isn't the specific acts that they do to you. The issue is what they're trying to achieve - which is break you. And the issue is that when you're completely in someone's power, anything they do can be as damaging as "real torture".

[Tonio]

Caravelle, your last paragraph is excellent.

[Jesurgislac]

Rosina: But I wasn't actually giving women a free pass on humiliating prisoners

No, you were arguing that sexual humiliation isn't torture when women do it to men. Eh: like I said, I disagree.

Caravelle: The problem is having coercive interrogations in the first place.

Exactly.

[Rosina]

Rosina: But I wasn't actually giving women a free pass on humiliating prisoners

Jesurgislac: No, you were arguing that sexual humiliation isn't torture when women do it to men. Eh: like I said, I disagree.

Actually, I'm arguing that some acts of sexual humiliation* probably aren't 'torture', but that the threat of actual sexual assault or rape is - whoever makes the threat, and whether that threat is spoken or implicit. But just because humiliation isn't 'torture' doesn't make it acceptable.

* Specifically, aunursa's example of a woman brushing her breasts against a man's back. Specifically not included in the 'sexual humiliation' category are: stripping men, forcing them into sexually suggestive poses, or putting a dog collar on them, all of which I would count as 'actual physical assault' or actions performed using the threat of violence, and therefore (in an interrogation situation) torture.

[Jesurgislac]

Specifically, aunursa's example of a woman brushing her breasts against a man's back

See Caravelle's comment. And consider how you'd feel about this specific example being done to some man whose dignity and modesty you respect, in order to remove both.

Look: a woman brushing her breasts against a man's back is not normally considered to be humiliating or shameful for a man: it's normally considered to be a sexual invitation, to which the man may respond. When an interrogator does it to a manacled prisoner, but it's not, in fact, a sexual invitation inviting a response, except perhaps in Aunursa's sexual fantasies: it's a deliberate attempt by the interrogator to humiliate/disgust the prisoner.

It is attempted torture, because that's the interrogator's intent and that's the context in which this act is committed - even if in another situation, CEO to new employee, it would be sexual harassment, or in a social situation, at a party, it would be rather aggressive flirtation.

[Rosina]

it's a deliberate attempt by the interrogator to humiliate/disgust the prisoner.

It is attempted torture, because that's the interrogator's intent and that's the context in which this act is committed

I agree with the first part, but am less sure of the second (and of whether 'attempted torture' is the same as 'torture'). But it is just haggling over which side of a boundary one individual action falls, when it's part and parcel with so many actions that are clearly part of the whole torture thing - and even if the UN charge sheet doesn't cite it, in any decent organization, civil or military, it would against all the rules. I don't think we're disagreeing about anything but the precise placing of a line which only a court can assign.

[Rosina]

I don't think we're disagreeing about anything but the precise placing of a line which only a court can assign.

Sorry, I forgot it's Thursday. Take that, you Scot!