Torture

Taken from the pharyngula blog on scienceblogs.com:

One little post about waterboarding seems to have stirred up the mob, but at least the majority seem to agree that it is torture. How could it not be? It's a process for causing pain and suffering, nothing more. At least the commenters here, even the ones I disagree with most strongly, are more honest than our politicians, many of whom seem to be in a state of denial.

But then the argument becomes whether torture is a useful procedure. I'm going to surprise some people and agree that torture is an extremely powerful tool. It's just useless for gathering information. There's just no way you can trust information gotten while ripping somebody's fingernails off with a pair of pliers — they'll scream anything to get you to stop.

Here is all that torture is good for: inspiring fear in a population. If you want it widely known that your ruling regime is utterly ruthless and doesn't care about individuals, all you have to do is scoop up random people suspected of anti-government activities, hold them for a few weeks, and return them as shattered wrecks with mangled limbs, while treating the monsters who would do such a thing as respected members of the ruling clique, who are immune from legal prosecution. The message gets out fast that one does not cross the government.

So, yeah, if you're a tyrant in Uzbekistan who is holding control through force of arms, fear is a useful part of the apparatus of control, and torture is a great idea, as are barbaric executions, heads on pikes, and bullets to the back of the head.

When the US government announces it's support for torture, they aren't talking about intelligence gathering: they are simply saying "Fear us." They are taking the first step on the road to tyranny.

The real problem is that fear isn't a good tool to use in a democratic society. We are supposed to be shareholders in our government; when a process of oppression is endorsed by our legislators and president, we should recognize that they are trying to set themselves apart from the ordinary citizenry, and it's time to rebel…before the goon squads come to your neighborhood. Anyone who supports torture is a traitor to the democratic form of government, and should be voted out of office, if not impeached.

And I know some are going to crawl out of the woodwork to claim it's OK in this case because the US is mainly trying to torture non-citizens, outsiders and foreigners — but then what it represents is an announcement to the rest of the world that the American superpower is not planning to be a benevolent member of the community of nations.

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I think I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments presented above.

They pretty much summed up what I believe. Torture is nearly useless for getting any sort of useful information.

Waterboarding is also definitely torture, I'm not sure why that's even up for debate. People who have experienced it will say it was absolutely torture.

Zelaron shows its true roots as a pro-torture forum by not banning D3v.

I was kinda wondering the same thing. Why was waterboarding mentioned?

Anyway, has the US government come out recently with a statement saying they support torture? If so... WTF?

I was kinda wondering the same thing. Why was waterboarding mentioned? Anyway, has the US government come out recently with a statement saying they support torture? If so... WTF?

Wel, there's been a lot of news on waterboarding over the last few months. And in 2002 I believe, Bush signed an order allowing waterboarding. But the reason for the mention of waterboarding was this link here:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...d.php?t=448717

Some guy tried waterboarding on himself and later described how terrifying it was. PZ made a comment on it in an earlier post and got mixed responses: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2...oarding_is.php

He decided to clarify in another post which I copied and pasted in my OP.

Anyone who waterboards an american citizen should be executed for treason.