Ture torture

What I love about these discussions is that on the outside chance anyone was swayed by someone's else's argument ("Golly, maybe I've been wrong all this time!"), would he or she ever admit it here?

That I'd like to see!

nimh: You have failed to understand my point. Willfully, I believe.

Consequently, if you ask me whether I condone the "torture" being done by "US personnel and allies," we must define the word, as joe has pointed out.

Wednesday, December 7, 2005; Posted: 11:33 GMT

Rice moves to clarify U.S. interrogation methods

Secretary of state says cruel or degrading methods banned

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought Wednesday to clarify U.S. policy on harsh interrogation methods, saying no U.S. personnel may use cruel or degrading practices at home or abroad.Rice's remarks followed confusion in the United States over whether CIA employees could use means otherwise off limits for U.S. personnel.

It also follows strong and sustained criticism in Europe over techniques such as waterboarding, in which prisoners are strapped to a plank and dumped in water.

"As a matter of U.S. policy," Rice said the United Nations Convention against Torture "extends to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the U.S. or outside the U.S."

The U.N. treaty also prohibits treatment that doesn't meet the legal definition of torture, including many practices that human rights organizations say were used routinely at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Bush administration has previously said the ban on cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment did not apply to Americans working overseas. In practice, that meant CIA employees could use methods in overseas prisons that would not be allowed in the United States.

Human rights organizations and critics in Europe have called that a loophole for treatment almost indistinguishable from torture. Prisoners suspected of links to terrorism have been chained to the floors of their cells, denied sleep and led to believe they could be killed.

Separately, Rice delivered a rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin over a new law she said infringes on democracy. Drawing a comparison with Ukraine's new democratic government, Rice criticized a Russian law restricting the activities of human rights groups, democracy promoters and other independent organizations.

"Democracy is built, of course, on elections, it's built on principle, it's built on rule of law and freedom of speech," she said.

Rice said U.S. diplomats have told Putin they are concerned about the restrictions.

The secretary of state spoke during a press conference Wednesday with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in his nation's capital, Kiev. Rice's visit was intended, in part, to bolster Yushchenko a year after he came to power in a popular revolution.

She also took questions from university students before a meeting later Wednesday with Ukraine's foreign minister.

Rice's five-day European trip, which has also included stops in Germany and Romania, is continuing to Brussels, Belgium, for a visit to NATO headquarters.

Her motorcade entered the Ukrainian capital Tuesday along the route where demonstrators set up a tent city last year and

Ticomaya wrote:

nimh: You have failed to understand my point. Willfully, I believe.

Not wilfully; in fact, I believe I understood you loud and clear.

The point of this thread is to point out that what Saddam did, now that was TRUE torture. The implication being that other stuff is not true torture. McG followed up by specifying that what he thought was NOT true torture, was the stuff liberals accuse the US of doing.

As an example of that, he mentioned the pics of people in hoods. You followed up with saying that yes, much of the stuff called torture by US critics is similar to what happens in hazing.

Now other posters already explicitized that the pictures we saw about Abu Ghraib were only the tip of the iceberg of what happened there. The worse things were just not considered fit, by the media, by the politicians, for family viewing. You may therefore deny they happened, but it was Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina who said at the time that "we're talking rape and murder here".

The very question McG raises in the title of his thread - what Saddam did, now that was true torture - raises the question of where the line is, according to you, between what is "true" torture and what is just the stuff liberals call torture, which is more the hazing-type, "innocuous interrogation techniques", to use your words, that makes the word meaningless. In fact, YOU raised that very question:

Ticomaya wrote:

Consequently, if you ask me whether I condone the "torture" being done by "US personnel and allies," we must define the word, as joe has pointed out.

OK, so let's get down to it. Put up, now that you've asked the question. We in our turn have brought examples of what us liberals would most definitely condemn as true torture. Beating someone's legs to pulp. Near-drowning someone time and again. Suspending someone from the celings by his wrists, handcuffed behind his back. Do those examples meet your definition of "true" torture? You appear to be ducking that question, having skipped answering it some three times in a row now. What is so challenging about answering it?

I can hazard a guess: because admitting that all of those three, and not just the first one, constitute "true" torture, implies admitting that the US interrogators engage in true torture - not just by excess, but as a 'tool' that's actually defended under the term "stress positions". The same euphemism you used as an example of things you did NOT consider "true torture".

OK so what about the "stress position" I described above? I had to google up what was meant in current conservative-speak by "stress positions", and this is what I found. Is that what you meant too? Do you not consider that torture? If you do, then what "stress positions" were you talking about that are not? Did you realise that US interrogators include positions like the one I described under this nomer? Will you still describe the use of "stress positions" as an "innocuous interrogation technique", without conditionalising that, now that you know?

See, we have plenty of questions for you, in the very context of the question you raised yourself. So far, you seem to be ducking them. But you still have a chance to outline your own position, here, and make clear where exactly you stand, instead of limiting yourself to condeming unspecified excesses, ridiculing what liberals call torture, and fudging up where you stand exactly on where the difference is.

It's that tactic that raises the suspicion that you refuse to be cornered into specifications just so you can always change your definition still, depending on what US interrogators may still turn out to also do regularly ("oh no, but thats not real torture either"). Much like Gonzales.

I do not think making somone stand on a box with a hood over their head is "torture." I think that cutting someone's tongue out of their head is "torture."

I do not think stacking naked prisoners in a pyramid is torture. I think sticking a burning poker in someone's eye, or cutting off their hand, is torture.

"As a matter of U.S. policy," Rice said the United Nations Convention against Torture "extends to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the U.S. or outside the U.S."

The U.N. treaty also prohibits treatment that doesn't meet the legal definition of torture, including many practices that human rights organizations say were used routinely at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

the message I seem to be getting from Rice and Cheney is "We don't use torture and you can't make us stop"