Throwing water on someone and leaving them in a 59-degree room is worse than shooting them dead? Keeping someone awake until they hallucinate is worse than shooting them dead? Really?

I can imagine torture that's worse than death. I don't think any of the things revealed in the article qualify. Which is precisely what I'm getting at. If you're not a pacifist and you think it's okay to kill people in war, I think you have to go to pretty tortured lengths to say that these enhanced interrogation techniques are unjustifiable in light of that. If you're a pacifist who doesn't think that killing is justifiable in the first place, that's a totally different thing.

IIRC, Solzhenitsyn notes in one of the early volumes of The Gulag Archipelago that you can kill a guy by tossing him in a room and throwing cold water on him. I don't know what it is about hypothermia that doesn't seem serious until you experience it personally but that must be what's going on here.

Reading Solzhenitsyn in the context of today's news might be worthwhile for people. If people can read all that, note the similarities between the NKVD's tactics and attitude toward the law and the CIA's, and walk away contentedly thinking to themselves "but our guys have good intentions and are a lot more selective!" we are hosed as a country.

What gives you the right to decide that for other people? Objectively having your genitals cut off is much less bad than dying. But I know plenty of men who would rather take a bullet than feel a knife sliding into them. The methods used by the CIA are exactly like this; and that is entirely by design. Why else would you do these things if not to cause massive psychological pain?

Why do you continually focus on the cold room and ignore all the other kinds of torture in this report? It's unconvincing and reflects poorly on your argument.

> Are you deliberately trying to sound like an idiot?

I understand the frustration, but please do not violate the site guidelines like this.

The comment would be appropriate and stronger with just the first question.

Fair. Edited to attack the words rather than the person.

I imagine this thread is all sorts of "fun" for you right now....

You know, the thread is not as bad as it could easily have been. It's problematic, of course, but not off the scale.

Thanks for respecting the guidelines. It matters a lot for established users to set good examples.

Maybe it's because it's such a big issue. The more minor something is, the louder the arguments seem to get.

Anyway, thanks for your work in keeping the place in line.

Simulated drowning again and again over months and years and never being released (meaning it can happen again anytime) comes across as way worse than being shot dead to many of us, yes.

Also, just being locked up with nothing to do can be painful in itself.

Oh man, I find your responses to this thread hilariously ironic. A week ago on a thread concerning H1B's and immigration to the US, you refuted someone's claim that America could accommodate almost unlimited migration because this ignored the issues of having these people absorb and internalize the cultural norms that make the US a great place to live and which others places that aren't so great to live lack. You used the example of bribery being a cultural norm in the country your parents emigrated from and one of the things that caused your father to leave.

Well consider me convinced! We definitely need to limit immigration to America otherwise we could end up with large numbers of people whose cultural norms allow them to condone torture and try to make jokes about it! Can you imagine what a cluster fuck this nation would be if the majority view was that repeated anal rape leading to multiple attempts at self-harm was something to be made light of!? No we definitely need to make sure that we only accept a small enough number of immigrants that we can ensure that things like the concept of the rule of law, the right to trial, and the right to not be, you know FUCKING TORTURED, are fully assimilated by them. Gods knows what things would be like if they somehow managed to not internalize these concepts.

I am extremely doubtful about your assertion that most people would rather be shot dead than locked up indefinitely.

You're also making assumptions that people die instantly on the battlefield and in drone attacks. That's not the case. They can (and do) die in slow, lingering, painful ways in such cases.

I see. And I admit writing the wrong thing.

My point is being locked up indefinitely and tortured again and again. Waiting for pain is also painful unless you are very mentally strong.