Waterboarding is certainly
not torture if one considers the historical meaning and application of true torture.
But the left simply loves to redefine words to suit their smear campaigns, in order to advance its wacky, nonsensical agenda.
Wavels
Excerpts below from
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American Thinker: The 'Torture' Fraud of the Left[/FONT]
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"Torture" is probably the most egregious of these cases. That's the explanation for the sneer quotes. Because, quite simply, in much of the debate over "torture", we're not talking about actual torture at all. We're talking about rough treatment, harshness, or coercion. [/FONT]
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The American left has defined these upward until they mean the same thing as torture, all as a part of their efforts to undermine the War on Terror in general. The core of this stance is the assertion that a slap on the head, several days without sleep, or hearing Rage Against the Machine played at full volume is fully the equivalent of torture in the classic sense. (Well... maybe we should reconsider that last....)[/FONT]
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Of course, it's no such thing. Torture is easily defined as physical assault carried out over a prolonged period against a victim under complete control and holding the possibility of permanent physical or psychic damage. Official legal terminology contains the proviso that torture consists of acts that "revolt the conscience" We can also add, by way of Dashiell Hammett, that such actions must have "threat of death behind them". If they contain these elements, they are torture. If not, they're something less. Not necessarily something justifiable or commendable, but not torture either. (Another method of judging these actions is to ask whether the activity would excite an individual like Mengele or Yezhov.) [/FONT]
Waterboarding may be brutal, it may be nasty, it may even be uncalled for.
But it's not torture. It does not inflict physical pain or damage. It does not destroy the victim. Its sole purpose is to create a sense of terror by arousing deep instinctive reactions against drowning, instincts shared not only by almost all mammals, but almost all vertebrates who don't happen to be fish. It is effective, it is quick, it leaves no scars and should revolt no one's conscience.