05-01-2009, 09:46 PM
Quote:Sorry, I think the UN guidelines are every bit as useless as my definition which you demolished. We still don't know what torture is.Not precisely, no. As I said, we're not going to find a nice litmus test to dunk into our activities, and read "torture" or "not torture". And there is grey space, where the line is being pushed.
However, what I entered this whole sub-thread about was that the category of mental torture should not be simply tossed out, which you appeared to be doing. The UN definition includes the vaguely tautological "physical and mental" specifically to invalidate such definitions as exclude mental torture. It doesn't tell you what torture definitely *is*, but it does at least deny certain other definitions about what it *isn't*.
There, as everywhere, there are evolving standards. If you're hoping for a single ahistorical, universally valid measure of torture (and I'm sure you're not), then it's not going to appear, here or elsewhere. Each court, each army, each person is going to have to make the decision, over and over again, so long as war exists, which, as Occhi rightly points out, is probably going to be forever.
-Jester