Since they defined "torture" for us...
Nov. 10th, 2010 04:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Okay, breaking into my stream of NaNo posts with a politics bit, which I have shied away from politics some lately, but this one has literally been bugging me for years, and this from Reuters brought it up for me again.
First: Go Amnesty International.
But what's bothered me for years has to do with this bit: "waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning condemned by some as torture."
Now, my understanding is that "controlled drowning" would be more accurate than "simulated drowning," but leaving that aside, I completely do not get the uncertainty as to whether waterboarding is torture. Thinking back, I seem to recall that Bush's lawyers had created this convenient but disgustingly, barbarically, criminally permissive definition of torture, and the definition was: it's not torture unless it feels like organ failure or death.
Under that criminally permissive definition, waterboarding clearly qualifies. Even if you call it "simulated," no one is disputing that it's meant to create in the recipient the sensation that they're drowning --- ie, that their respiratory organs are failing and they are going to die.
Seriously, it's not complicated.
First: Go Amnesty International.
But what's bothered me for years has to do with this bit: "waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning condemned by some as torture."
Now, my understanding is that "controlled drowning" would be more accurate than "simulated drowning," but leaving that aside, I completely do not get the uncertainty as to whether waterboarding is torture. Thinking back, I seem to recall that Bush's lawyers had created this convenient but disgustingly, barbarically, criminally permissive definition of torture, and the definition was: it's not torture unless it feels like organ failure or death.
Under that criminally permissive definition, waterboarding clearly qualifies. Even if you call it "simulated," no one is disputing that it's meant to create in the recipient the sensation that they're drowning --- ie, that their respiratory organs are failing and they are going to die.
Seriously, it's not complicated.