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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (482829)	5/22/2009 2:37:26 PM
From: one_less	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1574102

The language in most torture definitions is deliberately general enough to cover the issue while avoiding specific behavioral descriptions. The reason is that common behaviors can be torturous if applied with the qualifying intent or in a way that the level of qualified harm can be predicted. Most people would agree that malice aforethought, involving vindictive intent to cause harm is elemental to torture. There is no doubt in my mind that this could be the case in waterboarding, while at the same time there is no evidence of that being the situation for the three relevant cases where it was used by the CIA. At least no evidence has been brought so far.

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (482829)	5/22/2009 2:42:39 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1574102

But the language i offered isn't just US law, it's international law That doesn't matter. If something reality did shape itself to whatever the law said it wouldn't matter whether it was domestic or international. More importantly it doesn't so change itself. Just as statutory rape of a consenting 17 year old isn't actually rape. (It generally doesn't get treated legally exactly the same as real rape, and its prosecuted as "statutory rape", not as "rape", but even if it did get treated the same, it wouldn't really be rape.) How can argue it's an outlier? Equivalent to calling verbal abuse rape? That doesn't hold up. Its almost exactly equivalent to a domestic law calling verbal abuse rape, and its precisely equivalent to a treaty calling verbal abuse rape. Remember my point isn't about waterboarding, or other actions which might legitimately be called torture, but rather about the most mild actions which fit the definition you provided. If the definition is solid it should properly apply to even the most mild actions under it and this one doesn't. I think the definition the treaty drafters chose was so broad because they didn't want a definition that would exclude any form of actual torture. That's understandable, and you probably do need a broad definition to include all real torture. But a legal definition should properly work the other way. You shouldn't outlaw a X, anything that isn't X.