Should civilized nations use "Enhanced Interrogation" techni

[--Pete]

Hi,

That would be the source of the misunderstanding, then. I had assumed, apparently incorrectly, that you meant criterion as "necessary but not sufficient". If all you mean is "some kinds of torture involve physical harm", then of course, I agree.

Criteria can be disjunct. Thus, my criterion of physical pain can be joined with yours of mental pain to form the UN composite of "physical or mental". But I don't need to tell you that.

As for criteria (in the broad sense) that I consider important, I think there are several. Pain is one of them, I think anything involving inflicting pain to coerce or interrogate is almost certainly torture.

Quibbling, here, but I'm going to disagree. Consider an interrogator backhanding a suspect across the face, once. Torture? I don't think so.

Acute terror is another.

In general, I agree. However, consider incarcerating a claustrophobic. Here we need the 'intent' aspect from the UN guidelines.

Obviously, anything that leaves wounds or disfigurement is included. Anything which compromises the long term health of the prisoner, or causes a nontrivial chance of death, is also included.

True, and well past the gray area.

Discomfort is tougher, but I think stress positions is clearly over the line, as it has a fairly good chance of causing harm.

Still a matter of degree. Depends a lot on the condition of the subject.

Humiliation, as I said before, is questionable. I don't think (for instance) desecrating holy text is a civilized thing to do from the perspective of an interrogator, but it's not on the level of torture. Subjecting them to sexual humiliation is similar. I think those things should be banned and punished by any organization simply for internal discipline reasons, but I'm less sure they need to be banned by international treaty. However, I don't think those tactics have ever yielded good information, and so are probably quite pointless anyway.

Humiliation is very culture dependent. In a culture where the only recourse from humiliation is death, physical pain may be less torture than is humiliation. Examples would be feudal Japan and many of the American native tribes.

The oft repeated notion that torture is an inefficient way to obtain information is false. In almost every case it will generate a lot of information. What is in doubt is the accuracy of that information. A confession generated by torture is useless in determining if the accused is guilty, since an innocent person is just as likely to confess as is a guilty just to stop the pain. General information is equally suspect. But for cases where the information is specific and testable (e.g., a safe combo, the location of an accomplice or of a hostage, etc.), torture is very efficient.

The reason not to use torture is thus not a pragmatic one, but a moral one.

--Pete