Should civilized nations use "Enhanced Interrogation" techni

[Thecla]

Somewhere between breakfast in bed at a five-star hotel and slow flaying there is a point where torture starts. Too many of the idiots who have posted on this topic seem to think that if the breakfast has marmalade instead of strawberry jam, that line has been crossed.

This has it completely and utterly backward. Too many of the people who appear to support torture seem to think that a secret CIA jail is like an uncomfortable four star hotel, and that a 7 year incarceration in Guantanamo bay, without recourse, is no worse than a week at a slightly seedy Cuban branch of Club Med.

As far as the definition of torture goes, here is the one from the US legal code

As used in this chapter—
(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B ) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
© the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and
(3) “United States” means the several States of the United States, the District of Columbia, and the commonwealths, territories, and possessions of the United States.

Anyone who thinks that the treatment of the "high-value" Al Qaeda detainees by the CIA does not meet this definition, down to the "under color of law," or that any human being (with the possible exception of kandrathe) would not be permanently harmed by such treatment is either totally lacking in imagination or is in denial. I suspect that the main issue is simply that many of the people who will not acknowledge this think the detainees got what was coming to them, and simply don't care whether or not it was torture. Of course, Khalid Sheik Mohammed et al. in the secret prisons are thoroughly guilty of plotting to kill thousands of innocent people, but torture has nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the person being tortured.

It is also true, however, that many perfectly innocent people were swept up and incarcerated in the "war on terror", whether at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and who knows where else, or rendered to foreign governments. For sure, some of those innocent people were tortured also (how many? who knows?). Fortunately, none of them were family members of the posters on this board, so it's a-ok.