re: #773 Danny

I also think context matters when defining torture. It would be a cruel and unusual act to waterboard an innocent person for pleasure. That’s torture. On the other hand, if the subject is part of a plot to do harm to innocent people, it would not be, in my opinion, cruel or unusual to use waterboarding to coerce the subject to stop the plot. It would even be immoral to do otherwise.

All apologies and respect, Danny, but isn’t this part of the issue? We DON’T KNOW in advance if a person is innocent or not! That’s for a jury to decide, surely? Presumption of innocence and all that? So how can it be ok to pre-emptively waterboard people who might well be innocent, and to whom the american legal system would say we should accord the presumption of innocence?

Look, it’s torture or it’s not; it can’t become not-torture when we do it, as opposed to when ‘bad guys’ do it.

And I say again that I’m conflicted about when and how we might use waterboarding…
but let’s be clear that it’s TORTURE, and then talk about the other issues.

I hate child molesters, and in my mind they’re the best argument ever in favor of the death penalty—that doesn’t mean I want our cops to torture them to get a confession, even if they ‘know’ some particular pedophile is guilty of some crime. Why?— because we’re better than they are.

Same thing with terrorists, in my opinion. I wouldn’t endorse the idea of cops beating to death some pedophile (even though the idea makes me happy)—why? because we have a system of laws, and following the laws is part of what proves they are animals and we are humans.

We shouldn’t let others drag us down to their level.