Our forefathers ... such suckers!

But, tell me something; is not survival the first thing? Survival as a people, as well as survival as individuals...

If we give that up, and we give up control of the situation, what good is any of the rest of it? What possibility do any of those "high ideals" we hold, have, to survive in the world? If we are unwilling to do what's necessary defend ourselves by whatever means, then what it comes down to is we don't deserve to survive.

Which, seems rather handy, since we probably won't.

Survival is the highest priority, my friend. Everything else is secondary to that ideal, since everything else you hold dear DEPENDS on it.

The winners, you see, are the ones who get to decide what constitutes morality... and they won't pay what YOU or I consider moral, any mind whatever... as they have repeatedly demonstrated.

The idea of a US soldier being water boarded by an enemy would have sent Bitman’s compass whirling but not now

Ah, so you really think it didn't happen? Indeed, I would defy you to tell me in what war in this nation's entire history, the conventions were followed by those we were fighting.

You can't... they never were.

Not only is torture being used legally in our country today, its being used as punishment and not for information.

Which may be a hole in the UN Convention, now that I think of it. Most victims of the Inquisition, IIRC, confessed upon being merely shown the instruments of torture; that was so effective that it was the first step in the handbook.

Coerce:
2 : to compel to an act or choice --was coerced into agreeing--

Compel:
1 : to drive or urge forcefully or irresistibly --hunger compelled him to eat--
2 : to cause to do or occur by overwhelming pressure --public opinion compelled her to sign the bill--

2 : to compel to an act or choice

Websters definition 1 & 2 of "compel"

1 : to drive or urge forcefully or irresistibly
2 : to cause to do or occur by overwhelming pressure

Neither of these necessarily translate to "torture".

They CAN be torture as a rectangle CAN be a square. But, obviously the square is not necessarily a rectangle.

To me it is weaslie to use a term that CAN be ambiguous when there are many words out there that aren't.

Lunacy

If only someone had thought of this ... oh, wait:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any 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, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

According to the WSJ article I linked, The 1994 federal statute implementing the treaty contains additional definitions, including the "threat of imminent death" or "severe physical pain or suffering," as well as the actual or threatened use of "mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality.

Geneva, I believe, also covers abusive treatment. Beating & waterboarding obviously fall within the UN Convention, however.

The problem I've always had with self-styled libertarians is that they seem more concerned with being policy mavericks and philosophers than, you know, reality. Privatizing the highway system, for instance, may sound nice to people concerned a...

Anderson - Well put. One of the most criminally underreported stories about our criminal justice system is the sheer number of false confessions that are made every day, whether it be through coercive interrogations, or the police out and out lying about the type of evidence they have in order to obtain a confession and/or a plea bargain. (Murder suspects will be told, for example, that their fingerprints are on the murder weapon so they should plea out when, in fact, the murder weapon hasn't even been found. Who wouldn't try to plea to a lesser sentence in those circumstances?)

Our whole justice system, not to mention our system for counterterrorism operations, is far less concerned with actually stopping crime or terrorism and far more concerned with making it LOOK LIKE they're stopping crime or terrorism by "acting tough."

Andrew Sullivan's definition of torture is assuredly different than mine.

Also, Balko's position on the war on terror in general is pretty absurd. He's written posts in the past where he contends that we should treat terrorist attacks as though they were hurricanes. Just events that we cannot stop or control. Events that we should just try to clean up after they happen.

Which is a disgusting point of view to have, to my mind. We'll never be able to protect ourselves fully from terrorist attacks, but there is a great deal we can do to minimize the possibility that they'll happen.

Abdicating our responsibility to do what we can to stop and/or minimize the threat of terrorism is just plain immoral, in my book. Much more immoral than any of the "torture" Balko is outraged about.

And that's actually fairly mild compared to the other stuff that was reported. If that were the worst we did, I doubt it would be a scandal.

But pretty obviously, threatening to have one's mother imprisoned & abused is both wrong & counterproductive. What would a guy *not* confess to, to keep his mom or kids safe?

Police interrogation & abuse is of course an often-detailed subject in America (see "the third degree"). It does get confessions -- that's the idea. Whether the right person is confessing ... not so important.

Of course, we use coercion on our own criminal suspects on levels not far below that.

Unfortunately, that renders many news accounts unhelpful in determining if what's going on in a given case is 'torture' or 'coercion', but I think it's a necessary first step to get a more widely-agreed-upon definition...