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Torture: Is It Ever Acceptable?
delalluvia:
I guess we better define torture here.
Do we mean the rack? Cutting off thumbs? Flaying someone alive?
Or do we mean psychological torture? Deprivation situations, etc?
injest:
Glenn Beck was talking today about waterboarding...he says it is not torture because there is no physical harm.
they laughed and joked about it....then cut to a commercial for a board game the 'WHOLE family can enjoy". The juxtapostion made me physically ill.
he described how they put a wet towel over a persons face and then pour water over it. They did it to some terrorist and he broke in like three minutes. Beck and a senator were laughing about how reporters and soldiers let it be done to them just to see what it is like. I think it would feel much different if it was being done by strangers who you knew wouldn't hesitate to kill you (and that you knew wouldn't stop if you asked them to)
I think a good rule of thumb (regarding what is or is not torture) is not whether you would subject YOURSELF to the procedure...but if you would subject your loved one to it; a wife, child, lover.
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: injest on December 13, 2007, 12:51:12 am ---Glenn Beck was talking today about waterboarding...he says it is not torture because there is no physical harm.
they laughed and joked about it....then cut to a commercial for a board game the 'WHOLE family can enjoy". The juxtapostion made me physically ill.
he described how they put a wet towel over a persons face and then pour water over it. They did it to some terrorist and he broke in like three minutes. Beck and a senator were laughing about how reporters and soldiers let it be done to them just to see what it is like. I think it would feel much different if it was being done by strangers who you knew wouldn't hesitate to kill you (and that you knew wouldn't stop if you asked them to)
I think a good rule of thumb (regarding what is or is not torture) is not whether you would subject YOURSELF to the procedure...but if you would subject your loved one to it; a wife, child, lover.
--- End quote ---
I would put waterboarding as a physical torture. From what I remember reading, the person is getting water into their nose and mouths and they feel like they are drowning and could conceivably drown. Drowning someone on purpose most certainly causes physical harm, so IMO it's a physical torture.
I'm in the 'maybe' section. Like needcrayons implied, facetiously or not, how desperate is the situation? How many lives are at stake?
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: delalluvia on December 13, 2007, 01:15:16 am ---I'm in the 'maybe' section. Like needcrayons implied, facetiously or not, how desperate is the situation? How many lives are at stake?
--- End quote ---
Just to clarify, yes, I was being facetious, because on "24" the situation is always as desperate as it imaginably could be. Real life almost never meets that level, where the immediate fates of lots of people rest entirely on information held by an individual.
moremojo:
No, torture is never acceptable. I can't believe that a nation founded on Enlightenment principles (one of which is an antipathy to "cruel and unusual punishment") is now engaged in precisely this practice. It shames all Americans.
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