Vuk, the Godwin example of you jumping into a gun control thread is poorly chosen. You ignored the OP, you ignored the discussion, and jumped into how gun control enabled the Third Reich. It was, if anything, a classic example of how not to invoke the Nazis in an argument. If you're still sore about it, then clearly you haven't come to terms with your own error.
So pointing out the very few despotic regimes that supported waterboarding as interrogation is "guilt by association"? Even if you are voluntarily choosing to associate yourself with such scum, and defending the tactic (literally) with your life by playing at it in a bathtub?
Your inclusion of sexual degradation as torture is intriguing. It speaks to a certain squeamishness in your attitude that I did not expect. We did long-term enforced nudity with detainees, as well as splashing them with fake menstrual blood. When they refused to eat (the only option of protest left to them) we strapped them into chairs and forced food down a tube run through their noses. But sodomy, well, that's crossing the line? Really?
As for your "our waterboarding is humane and legal while their waterboarding was torture and wrong" argument, I'm curious; does any torture technique, if performed properly and without inflicting permanent damage, cease to become torture? If the mortality rate is reduced, then it becomes okay?
"mental pain stems from physical pain, and if physical pain is absent, you cannot have mental pain"
I don't even know where to start with this one. You can cause mental pain without physical pain, and quite easily. You yourself provided the example in an earlier post; threaten a person's family, and you will cause mental anguish. And where does sleep deprivation fall on your idiosyncratic list of torture/not-torture? I can't help but notice you've been ducking and dodging every time sleep deprivation is mentioned ...
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