I'm a wuss. Pain scares the shit out of me. I have to sit down when I get shots as needles are my nemesis. Yeah, I would suck as a junkie. I would also be someone there was no need to get creative for if one wished to torture me. Regular old school fingernail, teeth, broken bones, or severe beating techniques would pretty much do in my will power. There are those who are not like me. There exists, so I am told, folks who have a relatively high tolerance for pain. I have even seen stories about children (apparently this usually causes a pretty short lifespan) who do not feel pain at all. For people like that, if you want to torture them, you will need creativity indeed.
I imagine that I wanted to torture a hard rocking friend of mine, I could play Kenny G constantly. Probably the same song over and over. Vocalists might feel pain from the same treatment with Micheal Bolton as the tip of the spear. You could take some one up in an airplane or a tall building and dangle them in such a fashion so as to convince them they are getting ready to die. Or, you could make them think they are drowning.
Pain does not have to be physical. "Scared the shit out of me" depicts a situation where physiological changes are induced with out necessarily any exterior physical contact taking place. Fear is one of the goals of torture. Someone scared enough, for their lives, for the lives of their loved ones, for their health or reputation, will likely become compliant to the wishes of those inducing the fear. Total compliance as an expression of total control is the ultimate goal of torture. Even for torture done with no need or expectation of producing a specific action or extracting information, torture done just for the fun of it, would be considered a failure unless the torturee obviously completely submits to the will of the torturer.
Torture need not leave a physical mark. Torture need not be something that would cause you pain, nor need it appear painful or heinous to the onlooker, it only needs to be something that would induce enough pain or fear to cause the actual torture victim to comply fully with the wishes of the torturer. It is duplicitious, deceptive, dishonest, and dishonorable to even have the national conversation we are currently having in the most mealy-mouthed fashion possible. AND, it is dangerous to the well being of such of our military members who find themselves captured now or in the future.
Waterboarding IS a torture technique. There is no question about that. Anyone who cannot acknowledge that and, the illegality of the act by any signatories of certain agreements or, dare I say, conventions, does not deserve even flippant consideration for a position of authority in the justice department, much less as the head.
However, you could use waterboarding to get me to say that my position is anything you want it to be. If you have the morals of a republican.
CAFKIA
