In what realm does slamming someone against a wall 20 or 30 times not constitute an intent to cause extreme pain, i.e. torture? It's all okay if you think the guy knows something you want to know? Why do it in the first place? Just because you say you're only doing it to shock and alarm someone into talking doesn't make it so. The same could be said about kicking a guy in the jewels.

Or beheading...no wait, we did not go that route.

If the guy knows where and when the next 9-11 is going to occur then maybe kicking him in the jewels to encourage him to share that information might be justified.

A flexible wall...

Jesus Christ, these are shock tactics. How do some people here think you get an answer from a die-hard terrorist who would have no qualms about nuking a city immediately if he could?
Over a cup of coffee??

And comparing that to the Stalin regime or Soviet Russia where the state was in fact terrorising its own citizens, most of which were not guilty of anything, is laughable.

So torture is OK?

From the UN Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory.

Yes, absolutely, positively, 100% no doubt, it is okay if the guy knows something that we need to know to save AMERICAN LIVES, and that information cannot be extracted quickly enough to be useful.

The limit that should be respected is causing serious injury or disfigurement, or the use of enhanced techniques without probable cause to do so.

Okay, I'll bite: torture that does not cause permanant injury or disfigurement, and used with probable cause to do so, is indeed okay.

Although, I wouldn't call that "torture" ... I'd call that "pressure".

I'm just going off of the semantic trap you're trying to lay.

Aramike, I'm not laying any sort of trap. I want to know if August would approve of torture. Simple as.

That you think there is a semantic trap here is, I think, illustrative of the Bush Administrations attempts in this area, whether you meant it or not.
"We want to torture people, but we're not allowed. Let's find a way to torture someone while calling it something else. Lawyers, write us a definition please."

The US Gov't signed the Convention Against Torture, you can take the definition therein to be tacitly accepted by almost every nation on Earth.

They did rename it....enhanced techniques I believe.

My point is torture is not OK, but I don't see how waterboarding or the above mentioned "walling" constitutes torture.

It certainly isn't comparable to the "traditional" (and common sense) idea of torture. And it is certainly hard to understand how some people completely shut out the context of those interrogation techniques while trying hard to paint it as indiscriminate torture.

Unless I miss your meaning thats one of the most niaeve things I've ever heard.

Im sure than now that we have a Convention terrorists will put down there machettes, car batterys, and whatever weird **** they use to torture people, sometimes just for sport. Yes all that will end now.

You are correct - I do believe that the Bush administration did try to redefine torture so that the methods that needed to be employed were legal.

And I agree with that.

Look, we're talking about innocent, civilian lives and people who are hell bent in taking them. Those people will use any method - including torture - INDISCRIMINATELY to cause terror and disrupt/destroy our way of life.

We're not talking about tank formations on a battlefield. This is about one guy with a backpack containing a dirty bomb walking into NYC. The game has changed, along with the rules. The Bush Administration realized that. Obama along with the very left-leaning UN does not.

The fact that they wish to gamble with the lives of civilians in order to attempt to make a political statement is wrong.

Waterboarding someone who knows information that can save lives, and will not disclose it, is not wrong. Preventing the extraction of such information, especially for mere political gain, is MORALLY DEPRAVED.

I would buy this line of thinking.

So supporting torture using the pathetic ticking bomb routine and throwing in nationalist crap for good measure well done.

Yeah KSM gave specific information that he had done every islamic terrorist attack in modern hisory .

Murder , what do you call it ?
What do you call beheading non-Americans ? I still call it murder .
Murder is murder and toryure is torture , it doesn't matter what country or citizen is doing it .
In the course of the recent publicity over the US using torture how many military and agency interregators have gone on record criticising the method and its effectiveness is obtaining actionable intelligence ?

BTW, they can really stop doing it now anyway. Many of the techniques were psychological in nature in that they were suggestive to the detainee that there is worse to come. Shock and surprise. Now that the formerly TOP SECRET documents have all been disclosed to the public, those techniques are useless now. Yeah, guess why they were TOP SECRET. Not just because it is a difficult subject and the evil Bush admin didn't want you to know - the Bush admin / CIA didn't want THEM to know that the techniques are not just the beginning, but in reality the last resort.

So just scrap the whole thing now and "hang" a few people for political effect, at least that will be funny to watch.