Quote:
Originally posted by wellard:
Ohhh I'm not to sure about that Lucern, Madame du lash got me to admit I was a very, very naughty boy in record time! But I digress 
How do you define torture? Physical pain? Mental torture? Would being kept in jail without trial for over 4 years for interrogation purposes be classed as torture (like the USA does to Australians) or would a week’s physical torture be less cruel in the long run?
If you send you’re prisoners overseas to be tortured, standard USA procedure according to C.Rice, could the evidence still be used because the torture happened elsewhere?
|
LOL...well uhh..like any torture situation, you and she both
knew already that you were a naughty boy. You just gave in, naturally
How would I answer those? Yes, hell yes, and I guess it depends. Neither torture nor arbitrary confinement gives me much faith in the guilty party - and by that I mean the state. It depends, of course, on the people (I'm something of a junior anthropologist, you see). Lest anyone discount what torture does to a person: a week's torture often produces suicides, while others survive. With regular therapy, an incident of torture involving both physical and mental abuse lasting a few hours generally takes a couple of months to 'get over', if such a thing can be thought to exist. Now, this is a couple of months of extreme paranoia, nightmares, lack of sleep in general, hypervigilance (involves being 'on alert' all the time) at the least, and generally some torture-specific trauma, such as fear of uniformed officers. "Getting over it" generally entails relocating to a place without any of your friends and family and suffering a long-lasting post-traumatic stress disorder. Is lengthy and arbitrary imprisonment worse? Is is similar in some ways? They're both horrible in reality. If psychological illness isn't enough, consider lasting physical pain. Just earlier this year a strong young woman I knew, who contracted HIV while being raped during torture a few years ago, succumbed to AIDS.
I can't answer what confinement would be classified as really. Therefore, as per usual, you've earned the CAT (Convention Against Torture) - which the US boasts a hand in writing and adopting, minus that caveat I mentioned before. Fortunately, I've just finished a term paper on post-structuralist identity formation theory as it applies to asylum-seekers, so I don't have to type it out again
Quote:
|
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 suspecting 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 least the instigation of, or with the consent or acquiescence of, a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.
|
My thinking is that the lengthy and arbitrary confinement, while quite bad, wouldn't be torture because 1) it results from lawful sanctions (ehhh...maybe not) 2) the intentional infliction of harm isn't there. It'd be foolish to think that such actions do not cause mental harm, of course. This one hasn't been hashed out here afaik.
Btw, I'd like to hear more about these detained Australians.
Also, btw, did Condi screw up that blatantly? I haven't been keeping up, but I have heard that she's going out of her way to defend the right of the US to send prisoners elsewhere for 'interrogation'.