[tater]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

So your definition of "torture" only includes situations where you end up dead, or where your death is intended?

Fine, let me strap these electrodes to you. Don't worry, I won't use enough juice to kill you, and I'm telling you ahead of time that I have no intention of causing your death, and I'm convinced that if I'm really careful I won't do you any permanent damage.

So I'm assuming you'll be perfectly fine with me jolting your nuts with as much electricity as I like, as many time as I like, for as long as I like, so long as those conditions are met.

Yeah, right.

The GC requires that to be considered torture, it cause "severe" physical or mental harm. That is the definition.

The two techniques described are of course not at all the same (being submerged in water vs having a cloth wetted), but assuming that both nations did "waterboarding" we'd have an equal comparison, so let's downgrade the nazi method described to be waterboarding.

Since waterboarding is NOT lethal done by the US, the GC here is not really in force for physical harm for the US. It IS in force for the nazis, because clearly they'd happily keep pouring until you died.

So in the physical harm category we have the US method NOT ever leaving "severe" physical damage. With the nazis... severe physical damage (death) is quite possible if not likely.

OK, how about severe psychological damage. Here there is certainly a case against it on the US side, we're in agreement. Does it reach the "severe" requirement of the GC? Quite possibly, but then again, the GC was written in an intentionally vague way to allow rough treatment (clearly, or they'd have forbidden ANY harm). What about the nazis? Hmm, since the person being interrogated KNOWS they will kill him without a second thought, the effect of the SAME waterboarding would be FAR more severe mentally. You KNOW they shoot people summarily on the street. You KNOW they torture people to death, wholesale. It then is LIKELY in your mind that they WILL kill you with this.

So, while waterboarding might well be psychological torture, period, it is FAR more likely to reach that benchmark done by people known to torture people to death. Note that Bin Laden's own remarks regarding what AQ could expect as retaliation from the US (pre-9-11) included him saying that the US would likely subpoena them for making an attack. KSM, et al, clearly had a low opinion of US force of will in terms of dealing with them, so I imagine as uncomfortable as the interrogations were, he intellectually did not expect to die.