Arkady
President
I was listening to a program on NPR, regarding what happened at Gitmo, and the Orwellian abuse of language was just breathtaking. Absolutely nobody on the program dared to use the word "torture" to describe what was, as a simple matter of proper use of the English language, torture. It was "enhanced interrogation techniques," "harsh interrogation," "aggressive questioning," and other oily euphemisms.
Torture is the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering. This is the common historical use of the term, and also the definition under law. Under 18 USC Sec. 2340, it's "an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control." The waterboarding of people within our custody by CIA agents clearly qualifies, unless somehow you argue that the suffering wasn't "severe" enough. The whole point of doing it, though, is that it's so severe that it will break even hardened terrorists to get them to tell you whatever they think you need to hear to make it stop. Even those who go through it in controlled circumstances, where they know those administering aren't going to want to go too far, and where they have the ability to call it off, describe it as extreme suffering. And for those suffering it at the hands of hostile captors, with no end in sight, save possible death, there's severe psychological anguish on top of that.
Even with the US Reservations to the UN Convention Against Torture, waterboarding clearly qualifies. It is an "act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession."
Other sources, like Articles 32 and 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention follow a similar definition -- linking torture to willfully causing great suffering. The same is true of Article 7(2)(e) of the Rome Statute of the ICJ, and the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture.
Many of the other methods used against the detainees also cross the line into "torture" by some or all of these legal standards (which include making threats of death or severe physical pain). But waterboarding is as clear-cut as it gets. Its whole point is to cause severe suffering in order to traumatize the detainee into complying with your demands. That's torture, plain and simple. Yet all the NPR "journalists" and their expert guests carefully avoided using that word, in favor of the various Orwellian euphemisms.
The moment the Bush administration claimed that torture wasn't torture, the mainstream media, utterly preoccupied with preserving the image of impartiality, obediently stopped calling torture torture (except when done by other countries and by terrorists, of course). I think that if the GOP officially took the position that Russians aren't actually people, the mainstream media would come up with some euphemistic term for them, to avoid sounding like partisans on the "controversy" of the person-hood of Russians.
Torture is the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering. This is the common historical use of the term, and also the definition under law. Under 18 USC Sec. 2340, it's "an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control." The waterboarding of people within our custody by CIA agents clearly qualifies, unless somehow you argue that the suffering wasn't "severe" enough. The whole point of doing it, though, is that it's so severe that it will break even hardened terrorists to get them to tell you whatever they think you need to hear to make it stop. Even those who go through it in controlled circumstances, where they know those administering aren't going to want to go too far, and where they have the ability to call it off, describe it as extreme suffering. And for those suffering it at the hands of hostile captors, with no end in sight, save possible death, there's severe psychological anguish on top of that.
Even with the US Reservations to the UN Convention Against Torture, waterboarding clearly qualifies. It is an "act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession."
Other sources, like Articles 32 and 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention follow a similar definition -- linking torture to willfully causing great suffering. The same is true of Article 7(2)(e) of the Rome Statute of the ICJ, and the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture.
Many of the other methods used against the detainees also cross the line into "torture" by some or all of these legal standards (which include making threats of death or severe physical pain). But waterboarding is as clear-cut as it gets. Its whole point is to cause severe suffering in order to traumatize the detainee into complying with your demands. That's torture, plain and simple. Yet all the NPR "journalists" and their expert guests carefully avoided using that word, in favor of the various Orwellian euphemisms.
The moment the Bush administration claimed that torture wasn't torture, the mainstream media, utterly preoccupied with preserving the image of impartiality, obediently stopped calling torture torture (except when done by other countries and by terrorists, of course). I think that if the GOP officially took the position that Russians aren't actually people, the mainstream media would come up with some euphemistic term for them, to avoid sounding like partisans on the "controversy" of the person-hood of Russians.
