Defining Torture: Useful?

Mike cites approvingly another blogger stating thus:

Torture is any experience so horrible that no-one would consider trying it out simply for the purpose of writing a Vanity Fair article about what it’s like.

I have read Hitchens' piece on waterboarding, and it does not seem like empty sensationalism to me. Rather, it's in my opinion remarkable that a pundit would go and test it on his own skin what is no doubt an unpleasant (to say the least) experience.

It's very hard to give and exact definition of what is torture - in fact, there are no discrete steps but a continuum from "mild discomfort" to "utterly unbearable". There is also an important subjective component: resistance to pain can be quite different from person to person, as it's strength of character. Some people (like the jihadis) have a strong determination to sustain them, and there's people - soldiers, but also guerrillas and terrorists - who have trained to resist torture. The same experience can be a nasty but survivable ordeal for some, but an existence-wrecking one for others.

Saying that waterboarding is not torture seems to me an easy opt-out to avoid what is the real question: what acts and deeds are allowed in order to extract important information from captured irregular combatants? I think that torture is morally justified in these cases - but I'm not sure it should be made explicitely legal.

The point being that networked irregular combatants are not like regular armies: in the latter case, the information that could be obtained with torture of captured prisoner is likely not to be of great importance and is probably not enough to win. In the case of networked enemy organizations, instead, information is of vital importance to trace the network and disrupt its activities.

Or maybe, at an even more basic level, a problem we have to face is that many people want victory, but do not want their (metaphorical) hands to get dirty. Victory and moral purity, however, are I won't say mutually exclusive, but at least conflicting priorities.

Offense to Be Washed in Blood

Dr David Thorpe, you have crossed a line and thus sealed your fate.

The Legoins of Metal will get you, and you will taste torments so atrocious that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would wince at the thought. Torments so unspeakable that Morgoth himself regarded them as a bit over the top.

You will be chained to a Marshall Wall that will play every single metal album, single, demo ever recorded since Ian Kilminster first picked up a bass guitar. All this while curvaceous metal girls will sexually molest you and humiliate your virility.

And that's just the warm-up part... when we'll be finished, you'll be the craziest, wildest, most fanatical metalhead ever seen in this world. Or you'll be dead, and Norwegian black metal kids will use your bones as sexual objects.

About Torture

The unpleasant truth is that torture and related techniques (of which I'll talk later) do work. Not as well as in the movies, where a few seconds of pressure are enough to make criminals spill their beans; but neither they yield useless garbage as anti-torture absolutists say.

It is all a function of how well it's done.

In order to persuade someone to talk, the proper combination of carrot and stick has to be employed, as usual.

Yes, torture intended as severe physical or psychological torment produces disinformation at least sometimes, because people in serious pain are willing to do anything to make it go away. However, professional interrogators do know this, they aren't dumb sadists.

That is why interrogators developed less brutal and more subtle techniques to break one's resistance. These techniques go under the general name of coercitive interrogation, and are very varied. They are stress positions (uncomfortable positions such as kneeling while keeping your arms open at shoulder level); loud music - often of a type or subject particularly disliked; hot or cold rooms; cold showers; sleep deprivation; strip-tease or lap-dance numbers (for gynophobic prisoners); forced proximity with objects or animals regarded as unclean; insults and harsh comments on virility or sexual prowess or deeply held beliefs; clever tricks (such as making the prisoner think they are in a different place, or they have lost the war etc); threats of violence and up to fake executions (such as shooting a pistol close to the prisoner's head) and techniques like waterboarding, which is a fake drowning. It is also up to the interrogators to modify, adapt and improve their techniques for specific conditions.

There is no doubt that being subjected to these methods is unpleasant, but that is a feature, not a bug. It is necessary to put some pressure onto people to make them reveal information they want to keep secret instead. And these techniques work, leaving the subjects I won't say untouched but less damaged than with an iron maiden, for example. And I would be more than willing to force even in innocent Muslim to listen to Christina Aguilera at ludicrous volume if it can prevent my men from falling into an ambush.

It seems that the very definition of torture is being diluted and dumbed down to incorporate about everything done by American interrogators. Of course, there are vast grey areas, but in my opinion it is ridiculous and dishonest to put "sexual harassment" in the same league with amputation of limbs. And please don't ask me why, ok?

And now a few words on the prisoners themselves. Jihadis aren't teenage pickpockets. They are religious fanatics convinced that fighting the infidel by any means is their duty and glory. Nearly all of them are strongly determined, though, mean and deeply hostile. At least some received training, even anti-interrogation, and have combat experience. They won't talk if you just ask pretty please; more likely they will stab you in the back if you just let the guard down. Remember Nikita and her pencil? Jihadis have done that and worse.