Not so long ago the American conservative movement denied that waterboarding and the other “enhanced interrogation techniques” used upon prisoners were anything remotely akin to torture. That line has shifted somewhat in recent days. Now it’s “Well, maybe you think it is torture but – look! – it works!”
Does this constitute progress or not?
My own view is that torture is one of those things you recognise when you see it. But because we associate it with the rack and with thumbscrews and the oubliette, too many people assume that this is the only form of punishment that constitutes torture. Not so.
There’s an obvious and easy question to ask: if these methods – waterboarding, sleep deprivation, beating, being chained to the ceiling – were being used to extract information from a British or American soldier, would you consider them torture? Or, to take this a step further, suppose your brother or sister or mother or father or husband or wife or son or daughter were imprisoned in Iran or North Korea or Syria or Egypt and treated in this fashion, would you consider them to have been tortured or merely subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques?
I rather suspect most of you would say that, yes, this constitutes torture.
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