rvg, some couple of years later?

[Montmorency]

But you seem to have no interest in what waterboarding is. The japanese took people, poured water continuously, and then interrogated them--if they answered their mouth would fill up, and if they didn't answer they were beaten. After their stomachs filled with water and were distended they would jump up and down on them to force the water back up. We used a plastic water bottle, no more than 1 liter, held 12-24 inches over the head, blah blah, usually for 10 seconds, and they didn't interrogate people during them. It's a simulation of torture. The "enhanced techniques" were part bluff, part wearing people down, part making them feel like they endured something harsh enough to cooperate without feeling ashamed. So that they don't feel like they are in control. When they accepted that they cooperated.

Why did you accept the equation of japanese "waterboarding" with what we did? Why accept mccain's ignorant statement about "you'll say anything to get the pain to stop"? For that matter why accept that we treated the japanese justly after ww2.

You should know this stuff it's basic.

The Japanese? Forgetaboutit. The Klorxorns took people, grazed upon their minds with their Maw-Shears of Incorporeal Rending, and then sucked all the information from them in a process known only as "The Latrine of Mercy". After picking through the gains to get at what they desired, the information would then be mangled and regurgitated back into the prisoners' minds. After the shrieking insanity had set in, they would be made to worship the condition of their own degradation for ten thousand millenniums before being reduced to their constituent fundamental particles, each of which had been converted into another instance of themselves, each of which added to the unity of the individual's experience and so made a mockery of all the torment that had come before. But this was only the beginning. The Japanese just stuck stuff under people's fingernails for like a few minutes, and their techniques weren't even reliable methods of retrieving information. To name Japanese squirming "torture" is to deny the untold groans and wails that have been swallowed up by the untold vastness and sound-slaying gravity of the Klorxorns' fortress in the pit of our galaxy's black hole. The Japanese merely performed what they understood, and their "prisoners" responded as they understood. It was not torture, nor even the simulation of torture, but language. Do not blame the Tower of Babel. The Klorxorns have no language, save the engineered and emergent understanding that it is only fact for us take on the burden, the responsibility, of our own suffering, and so to suffer the more greatly its own continuous encrease.

Also, in Hell you suffer for ever and ever.

Just tell us where exactly you draw the semantic line and make a case for it, Moses.

[Greyblades]

The Japanese? Forgetaboutit. The Klorxorns took people, grazed upon their minds with their Maw-Shears of Incorporeal Rending, and then sucked all the information from them in a process known only as "The Latrine of Mercy". After picking through the gains to get at what they desired, the information would then be mangled and regurgitated back into the prisoners' minds. After the shrieking insanity had set in, they would be made to worship the condition of their own degradation for ten thousand millenniums before being reduced to their constituent fundamental particles, each of which had been converted into another instance of themselves, each of which added to the unity of the individual's experience and so made a mockery of all the torment that had come before. But this was only the beginning. The Japanese just stuck stuff under people's fingernails for like a few minutes, and their techniques weren't even reliable methods of retrieving information. To name Japanese squirming "torture" is to deny the untold groans and wails that have been swallowed up by the untold vastness and sound-slaying gravity of the Klorxorns' fortress in the pit of our galaxy's black hole. The Japanese merely performed what they understood, and their "prisoners" responded as they understood. It was not torture, nor even the simulation of torture, but language. Do not blame the Tower of Babel. The Klorxorns have no language, save the engineered and emergent understanding that it is only fact for us take on the burden, the responsibility, of our own suffering, and so to suffer the more greatly its own continuous encrease.

Also, in Hell you suffer for ever and ever.

Just tell us where exactly you draw the semantic line and make a case for it, Moses.

Dude.

Can I have your dealer's number?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Sasaki - a simulation of torture is torture, because torture is a mental not physical, thing.

You are, frankly, being stupid in claiming that torture is useful, there really isn't a foreseeable instance where you could extract reliable information from someone quicker using torture than by just sitting them down with a cup of tea and talking to them.

[Montmorency]

No no, I basically just wish he would provide a concrete and encompassing formulation of what he would consider torture, and argue for why we should accept this definition over whatever our working definitions might be, or, say, the UN's.

My understanding so far is that Sasaki considers any treatment to be potentially torture, but only on the conditions of its duration and intensity. What are [the definition's] limitations? What thresholds of intensity and duration should be accepted as torturous? Why should we accept the definition as a whole?

This is where the discussion should go, IMO.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Err, yeah. My bad. This was the only bit where I was trying to interpret your post:



The rest was just me stating what I think about it. Which is that any kind of institutionalized and sanctioned torture is wrong. Sometimes governments need to do things that are wrong, but in a democracy those things need to be done with the full knowledge and support of the people. If someone actually needs to be tortured, then surely the need is so great that the people will back you up, right? If not, then perhaps they don't need to be tortured.

My objections are not in the acts themselves, but in the less-than-honest and certainly less-than-democratic way the government handled it. This opinion is not based on legal nitpicking, but on a healthy respect for the golden rule. Every democracy needs that.

While I see your point, I disagree.

We elect politicians to make hard choices. Asking the British people to back up not beefing up Coventry's Air Defense to preserve the secret of Blechly Park is not acceptable. That was a decision for the War Cabinet, and for their consciences. Spreading that kind of pain around is worse than taking the decision and letting people die.