re: #107 reine.de.tout

Aside from the damage done to the person being tortured, I think requiring someone to torture another person on our behalf is an awful thing. I’m convinced that doing something hurtful to another person has a detrimental effect on a person, no matter how good their motives are. So yes, the act itself is a breakdown of civilization on a lot of different fronts, and it’s frightening. It’s also frightening to me to know that a person has information that could be used to save a bunch of people, if the information becomes known. So the question for me is where is the line drawn between true torture and a difficult interrogation? Better minds than mine will have to figure that out.

If a person has information? Then they have information.

I’ll never agree that torture should even be a possibility, it’s inhuman, and the notion that our government does it is barbaric.

I find it as abhorrent as child rape, and I find it more evil than terrorism or murder, because it’s a systemic government normalization of inhuman barbarism. If we normalize torture, we may as well normalize rape as a way for the government to get what it wants. Personally, I’d rather be raped than tortured. To me, it’s as if the US government normalized and practiced cannibalism, and paid people to cannibalize human beings. So yeah, my mind is quite made up on the issue.

Where the line is drawn is not really a thing I can say, I don’t have a doctorate in psychology, I’m not a doctor, or a researcher into the way the human mind works. I don’t have access to the roomfuls of equipment it takes to analyze brain waves. I would trust an esteemed panel of doctors and psychologists and researchers to make that distinction. I sure as hell wouldn’t trust anyone within the military to make such a distinction, the conflict of interest is as clear as day.