Should civilized nations use "Enhanced Interrogation" techni

[kandrathe]

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 was merely making the observation that we choose to do to ourselves things far worse than what is described by others to be torture. Just the other day a friend was complaining that he had lost all feeling in both his hands. When I queried what activities he had done, he confessed he had spent most of the previous day running his rototiller on rock hard clay ground. Now, I don't condone strapping people to a machine that yanks their arms from their sockets to extract information from them. That I have trained myself to endure cold, or to swim for miles, or hold my breath for a long time is something I do to myself. I fully admit that I wouldn't like to be thrown off a boat in the North Atlantic, swim with polar bears, or have my head held under water. I would say that in such a situation, I might be better able to survive it or tolerate the misery of it longer than the person who has not had such survival training (or at least until the bear killed me).

I still think I would refrain from falling for one of the classic blunders; Don't put yourself in the position of needing to be interrogated by any governmental authorities. The most famous, of course, is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!