The torture debate

Fox reporter Steve Harrigan underwent the torture technique "waterboarding" on-air following VP Cheney's feelings being made clear on the matter.

When asked by journalist Scott Hennen if "a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives":

"Well, it's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there I was criticized as being the vice president for torture," Cheney said. "We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in."

At his photo op, Bush said, "This country doesn't torture, we're not going to torture. We will interrogate people we pick up off the battlefield to determine whether or not they've got information that will be helpful to protect the country."

The argument is that as technique causes no lasting damage (physically, at least), and so shouldn't be considered torture at all. This blog, where I found the story, has a lengthy comments section proclaiming all kinds of at views on it, some, I might point out, are somewhere to the right of my views. I found them compelling, though, I admit.

It is not considered a crime to kill a sleeping soldier in a theatre of war; why should it be so to hold him, "dunk" him and let him live? As long as America and her clients are prepared to deal with the potentially permanent sullyings of their reputations, It could be argued that, in the face of beheadings and suchlike, our tactics seem tame. Of course, we do far worse than that. Step aside electrocution - we're kicking it positively medieval with the strappado. It's a new one on me - and is aka the Palestinian Hanging (the etymology variously and invariably attributing its invention to either side of the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Anyway; according to that wiki page:

In 1996, the European Court of Human Rights found Turkey guilty of torture (Aksoy v. Turkey, 18 December 1996) for its use of Palestinian hanging.

We can't have it both ways.

24, and it's iconic Jack Bauer, takes us weekly through its marvellously insane fantasies whereby it is explicitly or implicitly shown to sometimes be a good moral choice to torture and murder enemies of the state, when the lives of the people depend on it. Absurd, I know, to loop all the way back to the Rupert Murdoch's propaganda engine(kidding... sorta...), but that feeling that sometimes, somehow, it might be acceptable to torture is a powerful one, no less a philosophically disturbing one.

Could I honestly say that I could never approve it? If the stakes were as high as those shown in our action drama television hypotheticals - from family kidnappings to nuclear armaggeddon - could any of us honestly resist authorising a waterboarding? What about worse? In an absolute neccessity?

Squeamish, isn't it?