My story is not meant to show an exact choise—it’s meant to highlight the bizarrely overlooked ingredient that it is how we view ourselves that is possibly the most important reason to not condone torture. Hence my question “Do we want to be…” not “Do we want them to think…”

And your most-extreme example, the ticking bomb scenario so often used by Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh and others to attempt to justify the unjustifiable events at Abu Ghraib—it is fearmongering, period. We do not make rules for ourselves based on such extreme examples. We make rules and laws based on reasoned restraint, and we deal with the extremes as they come. (There have been times when we did make laws based on your reasoning. Japanese internment camps was one of those times.)

- UN Committee Against Torture
- The Committee’s report on the United States
- The US written response to the Committee report which asserts that the US definition is narrower
- My post on the report and US response

- 2002 Justice Dept. Torture Memo written by John Yoo that narrows definition of torture
- 2005 defense of the Torture Memo by John Yoo
- My post on John Yoo’s narrowing of the torture definition

I think I got all of it in there.

Kind of clever in its cruelty.

Now this is the important part. You cannot take the United States rejecting the ‘cruel and inhuman’ part on it own. It works together with the US narrowing of the definition of torture. By narrowing the definition of torture, and rejecting ‘other cruel and inhuman’ acts, the US then argues that what it does is not torture and thus acceptable.

The real cleverness here is the narrowing of the ‘torture’ definition. That’s where people should be focusing.

The US has narrowed it so that only ‘prolonged’ pain that leads to either ‘organ failure or death’ is considered torture. That is not the Convention’s definition of torture.

What the US has done is, essentially, added its own ’signing statement’ to the Convention and said that we will interpret torture the way we like and there is nothing you can do about it. In fact, in the 2002 Torture Memo, John Yoo pointed out that since the US does not acknowledge the ICJ (International Court of Justice), there is no international body that can enforce US violations of the Convention. Therefore, in essence, the US can violate the Convention without any consequences.

When we are arguing about whether ‘humiliation’ constitutes torture, we are at the wrong end of the spectrum. The real issue is whether anything short of permanent damage such as organ failure or death constitutes torture. The US says that it does not.

Put Thom’s choice in a different light. Say you have a burning building with women and children in it. There is absolutely no other way into that building but through one door. That door cannot be broken down physically and it is locked. The only person who knows where the key to that door is is the same person who set the fire. You have that person in your custody.

What do you do?

I posted about it not long ago, with the “injection might cause pain during administration of the death penalty” cases here in Houston. There was a lot of debate.

Then there’s the recent case (is it Ohio?? not following it) where the transgendered inmated needs a full sex change operation to become, fully, his psychological gender. The discussion was whether not providing the operation constituted “cruel and unusual punishment” because of the psychological ramifications.

We haven’t successfully defined cruel and unusual, because subjective terminology is problematic, every time.

I hear what Mash is saying, and I’m sure somebody will tell me why I’m wrong, but I don’t think torture is as hard to define as “humiliation” or “degradation” - which is the section left out of the Pentagon guidelines.

So - in terms of Islam, and/or Iraqi culture (for instance): dressing a man as a woman would seem to be pretty humiliating, in context. Is that a violation?

OTOH, is, say, urinating on a prisoner humiliating? It seems to me (imho) that such a thing would be reprehensible everywhere.

Are they torture? Not, probably, as I would define it. Is there a difference between the two? Does one bother us and not the other?

The UN Convention has been agreed to by the United States and the UN Committee Against Torture is a very respected body. Feel free to read their report and the American explanations like if Americans torture outside the US it cannot be called “torture”.

The definition of torture is rather clear. You can choose to narrow it if you like. And there was plenty more at Abu Ghraib than panties on heads. If you have any doubts I’d be happy to link you to some pictures to remind you.