A lawyer for Charles Graner, accused ringleader in the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal, has compared piling naked prisoners into pyramids to cheerleader shows and said leashing inmates was also acceptable prisoner control.
Graner’s attorney said piling naked prisoners into pyramids and leading them by a leash were acceptable methods of prisoner control. He compared this to pyramids made by cheerleaders at sports events and parents putting tethers on toddlers.
That’s a decent argument. I doubt you’ll find a consensus here that humiliation by nudity and suchlike is “torture” or “abuse” either. They did plenty of things wrong, rehashing “nude pix0rz” is hardly one of them.
No, and by saying so you are softening what “torture” actually is. If a parent “embarasses” their child by interuppting phone calls or driving them to school or something and the kid gets fed up and takes a nose dive off the family garage, are you going to say the parent tortured the child? No of course not, because “those things are totally different”. Then your definition is dorked up.
No, and by saying so you are softening what “torture” actually is. If a parent “embarasses” their child by interuppting phone calls or driving them to school or something and the kid gets fed up and takes a nose dive off the family garage, are you going to say the parent tortured the child? No of course not, because “those things are totally different”. Then your definition is dorked up.
How can you possibly say: humiliation = torture ?[/quote]
Give me a break. Your immediate comparision to “pile Iraqi guys up in situations that are so shameful in their culture that they’ll kill themselves if its known” is equivalent to “driving your kid to school?” What the hell is wrong with you? What the hell is wrong with conservatives in general?
Requoting myself from a blog today…
“What’s torture, really” is only complicated if you’re trying to find a way to rationalize torture.
Torture can be both mental and physical: this was an established definition before the American guards tortured the Iraqi prisoners and it still is now. The argument may sound tempting, when you change the context and crime, by turning it from armed guards walking a captureed prisoner around on a leash covered in your own shit to a parent interrupting their child’s phone call. You could argue that by having mental anguish included in the definition of what constitutes torture, that it somehow cheapens the meaning of the word, as surely mental anguish is less bad than physical harm?
No; it depends entirely on the level of torture and the context. If you were to give me the choice between allowing a child to be beaten by his older brother, or to allow armed guards of a foreign and hostile nation to force him to walk around on a leash covered in his own faeces, piled up in naked pyramids with other prisoners, or forced to stand on a chair, hooded with electrodes attached to his genitals in the full expectation of, at best, an electric shock and, at worst, death, I would choose the beating. It’s pretty easy to define things in such a way to make them sound less bad, but when you look the full spectrum of realities, rather than just a ridiculous sub-set, you see the real picture.
I mean what would you prefer: being treated like these prisoners by armed Saudi prison guards, not knowing whether you are going to live or die (and surely that is the worst part) or getting a black eye down at the local police station for not handing over the information fast enough?
We all have to hope real hard that nobody here commits suicide and then claims that Jason constantly attempting to humiliate everybody here drove them to it.
Because then he would be a torturer and he would go to jail and then we couldn’t bask in his wisdom anymore.
The guards at Abu Ghraib forced prisoners to masturbate in front of them, onto each other, and into each other’s mouths.
That’s detailed in the original New Yorker articles by Seymour Hersh that broke the story, but has been largely glossed over in network and newspaper coverage — I guess because they didn’t want complaints about sexual content from readers with their moral heads up their moral asses. In the famous picture of Lynndie England giving the thumbs-up and pointing at the guard’s dick, he’s masturbating under compulsion. The pixelation that media sources put on the photo disguises the fact. In the original pictures that the Senate committee saw, it’s all clear.
Anyway, the practice is obviously a level or three beyond “nude pics” and simple humilation. Being forced to participate in sexual acts against your will, and particularly in acts that are personally and/or religiously abhorrent to you, is a physical violation closely approaching rape. Anyone willing to dither about whether that’s “torture” is a moral coward.
So is a military boot camp torture? Because that’s a pretty precise description of exactly what my 13 weeks was like.
Overlaps, sure. But I don’t believe that either fully contains the other in this metaphorical Venn diagram.
If I were arguing that, I’d call bullshit on myself. :P
Bad analogy, granted. How about one more apt: the Asian student who dives out of his dorm room window having gotten his first B in a class. Cultural mores dictate achievement, he believes he cannot handle the embarassment, boom.
Your previous comparison to thoughts such as “would you want it done to your own mother” too were probably poorly worded, no?
Your last question above was idiotic.
Agreed. I don’t ever pop in the monocle, fold my fingers together and gaze longingly into the warm fireplace asking “what is torture”. I have clearly defined it before (not in this thread, true) as I believe it to be.
True enough. And just as surely there are physical things which are “lighter” than psychological treatments and tortures, such as yeah takinga shot to the eye and getting a shiner is certainly “lighter” than being in a prison not knowing your fate.
I’m also not saying there is no such thing as mental torture. I’m saying that in many of the items with which the public was presented, calling it torture was more of an emotional appeal/crusade than anything else. I don’t agree that all degradation is mental torture.
I’d agree with that. Fortunately you pointed out that much of this has been glossed over, and so I have no trouble saying “I didn’t know that”. I guess this very kind of thing is why they’re having a trial where this kind of information will be presented.
However, in those instances where there was nothing more than “nude pics” or “flashing lights and loud music”, I don’t agree those to be torture.
Military basic training is tortuous, but it’s not torture. You can leave, for one thing. Well, you used to be able to leave, when I did it. For another, the humiliation involved is a little more mild than the “play with yourself in front of everyone” variety. I mean, just a wee bit more mild, wouldn’t you say?
What did they do to you? When I went through, mostly they called the fat guys fat, the crybaby guys crybabies, and whenever someone did something incorrectly they got called stupid. One drill consistently referred to a guy by the nickname “applehead”; that was probably the most humiliating thing that happened, and I’m not even sure what “applehead” means.
Now, when I was a drill cadet and a dumb kid passed a note to the (white) drill sergreant I was working with that said he wanted to quit because he couldn’t stand living with black people anymore, that kid got some next-level humiliation. But still nowhere near naked pyramid level, and there was no question he deserved it.
Which goes back to my original argument. Just because all humiliation isn’t torture doesn’t mean it can’t be used for torture. Just becuse sex is sometimes good doesn’t justify rape.
If you can’t follow that logic your thinkie box is badly broken.
I’ve read about recruits who kill themselves due to humiliation, or who inflict grievous injuries on themselves to get out of that situation. The whole “put your leg between two beds and SLAM it” deal. However, I was responding to Bren’s particular definition of torture: systemic, calculated humiliation with the ultimate objective being to break a person’s will with which I disagree.
Now Matthew, would you not agree that being forced to get in a “naked pyramid” is not significantly less “offensive” then being forced to have some strangers whack off into your mouth?
Rape clearly has intent though (Koontz definitions notwithstanding). And you earlier made the point that if I was going to argue intent, you’d call bullshit. Can I now call bullshit on your argument? That some forms of torture and some forms of humiliation are equivalent is not what I am questioning.
:roll: I follow the logic, but I disagree with your comparison to sex/rape for a reason that you yourself brought forth earlier.
Rape clearly has intent though (Koontz definitions notwithstanding). And you earlier made the point that if I was going to argue intent, you’d call bullshit. Can I now call bullshit on your argument? That some forms of torture and some forms of humiliation are equivalent is not what I am questioning.[/quote]
Wait a minute. I said:
If you’re trying to argue that the intent of the person commiting the act doesn’t factor into the definition of the act, I call bullshit.
I’m confused. Are you trying to argue my point now?
:roll: I follow the logic, but I disagree with your comparison to sex/rape for a reason that you yourself brought forth earlier.[/quote]
I’m saying that “An act that has a non-torture equivalent can still be used for torture.” Comparing it to other situations is meaningless except for definition.
The big difference between army recruits and prisoners, which is glaringly obvious but not getting mentioned for some reason, is that army recruits submit themselves to a harsh, and potentially humiliating, training regime through choice. Torture is a form of mental or physical pain, especially that which can leave lasting mental or physical scars, that the person is subjected to against their will, for the means of punishment, coercion, or just plain sick enjoyment of the perpetrator.
