rvg, some couple of years later?

[Kralizec]

You mean this like a joke (edit: you too montmorency), but you almost nailed the truth. Waterboarding can be used for torture if that is the wish of the interrogators--just do it like the japanese did. Denying someone water could be torture if it was carried out to long. Isolation or sleep deprivation can be torture if carried out to long. That's the reason the main argument from the gitmo-maniacs is false equations with japanese or nazi's or whoever. The claim that waterboarding is torture has no more merit than the claim that sleep deprivation is torture--they both have a tremendous range that covers everything from not torture to horrendous. If I felt like writing some dumb parody I would take someones claim that sleep deprivation isn't torture and then post a bunch of outraged moralizing about how so-and-so went insane from not being allowed any sleep for 11 days.

Sending a kid to bed without dinner once is not child abuse. Not feeding your kids for several days is. Suffocating your kid to the point of unconsciousness, even if you're careful not to cause any permanenent damage, only requires one time to be abuse.

Water boarding is a technique that artificially creates the experience of drowing in the subject. Even if you use it sparingly it's still torture. Even if you don't sadistically beat them in between like the Japanese it's still torture. Any comparison with the Japanese or the nazis is hyperbole; equivalency is not necessary for something to be torture.

To me it appears that you're merely trying to restrict the meaning of the word "torture" because you're unwilling to challenge the notion that all torture is bad.

You're entitled to your opinion and to think that McCain is a dumbass, of course.