What is torture?

[Kulindahr]

There's a lot of discussion going on here about torture in general, waterboarding in particular, and it all revolves around the question that heads this thread.

I'd like to bring a little perspective to this, by taking a step back and looking at it from a slightly different angle:


Suppose we talk about surprise as an element on the battlefield: what comes to mind is physical movement, getting people into place that the enemy doesn't know about, revealing a capability the enemy didn't know you had; we think of "pulling one off", or "putting one over" on the other guy -- we view it as our actions, in physical terms. But there's a simple maxim that defines what surprise really is; it goes something like this:

Surprise is an event that takes place in the mind of the enemy commander.


Many here are defining torture in physical terms, of whether it causes injury or does damage. But that's the simplistic sense of that first view of surprise on the battlefield -- and just as there, it's wrong. It should go this way:

Torture is an event that takes place in the mind of your captive.


The activity involved is, at root, irrelevant; what's relevant is the moment in the captive's mind when capitulation takes place and cooperation is obtained. The question of what defines torture, then, is simplified: what is the nature of the mental event which leads to capitulation?


I'll drop back in with more once y'all have had at this for a while.

 

[HenryReardon]

Was the gom jabbar torture? It inflicted pain, but left only a memory.

In Dune, Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam uses a gom jabbar to test Paul Atreides just prior to his departure to Arrakis. This "humanity test" is carried out with a box that produces pain by nerve induction, causing pain that is intense and severe but strictly psychological. Only a human is considered to be able to possess the self-discipline to withstand this pain and resist the urge to take their hand out of the box. A person who withdraws their hand is stung with the gom jabbar, causing instant death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gom_jabbar

 

[hermanding]

kuli, i do think that something inflicted that is very painful to the body also is torture, not just the psychological torture you mention.
ding

 

[naked gent]

Torture is an event that takes place in the mind of your captive.

Not a bad definition at all Kul.

While reading other threads on the subject I saw it mentioned, accurately, that we prosecuted the japanese for waterboarding after WW2 yet I couldn't help but think that our current version might have differed some from the version the enthusiastic japanese might have used.

In this details do matter.

I also don't think it matters if quality intelligence is the result of the torture as if thats the standard then the door is open to anything that produces results and I don't think those here who don't have a problem with the Bush policies would go quite that far.

To illustrate how much the mind does matter in torture here's a little story I read which was contained in an story Mark Bowden wrote on the art of interrogation.

He tells this story of three men who worked for the intelligence agencies of three different countries. One was CIA, another was KGB and the third worked for the Mossad. They were sitting around talking shop when the tactic of threatening to kill your subject came up and one of them said it never really worked.

He recalled telling one captive that if he didn't talk he would be shot at dawn and the next day went and got him at dawn and when he still refused to talk started marching him out into the jungle to shoot him all the while giving him chance after chance to save himself.

The guy never talked (and was not shot) and one of the other men there said that tactic hardly ever works because once you tell someone they are going to die they begin to make their peace with their situation and the world and just shut down as they resign themselves to their fate.

He said a better tactic was to tell your subject and two other men that they all would be shot at dawn unless someone talked and to march all three of them out into the jungle and stand the guy you really think has the info in the middle and then shoot the guy to the right of him and then the guy to the left of him.......and, he said, very often that did make them talk.

If that is true then it is the messing with their minds which makes the difference. Making death less abstract produced the desired results and they never laid a hand on him.

 

[Kulindahr]

Not a bad definition at all Kul.

While reading other threads on the subject I saw it mentioned, accurately, that we prosecuted the japanese for waterboarding after WW2 yet I couldn't help but think that our current version might have differed some from the version the enthusiastic japanese might have used.

In this details do matter.

I also don't think it matters if quality intelligence is the result of the torture as if thats the standard then the door is open to anything that produces results and I don't think those here who don't have a problem with the Bush policies would go quite that far.

To illustrate how much the mind does matter in torture here's a little story I read which was contained in an story Mark Bowden wrote on the art of interrogation.

He tells this story of three men who worked for the intelligence agencies of three different countries. One was CIA, another was KGB and the third worked for the Mossad. They were sitting around talking shop when the tactic of threatening to kill your subject came up and one of them said it never really worked.

He recalled telling one captive that if he didn't talk he would be shot at dawn and the next day went and got him at dawn and when he still refused to talk started marching him out into the jungle to shoot him all the while giving him chance after chance to save himself.

The guy never talked (and was not shot) and one of the other men there said that tactic hardly ever works because once you tell someone they are going to die they begin to make their peace with their situation and the world and just shut down as they resign themselves to their fate.

He said a better tactic was to tell your subject and two other men that they all would be shot at dawn unless someone talked and to march all three of them out into the jungle and stand the guy you really think has the info in the middle and then shoot the guy to the right of him and then the guy to the left of him.......and, he said, very often that did make them talk.

If that is true then it is the messing with their minds which makes the difference. Making death less abstract produced the desired results and they never laid a hand on him.

Bowden's good.

And that's a very good illustration: if you've promised a man you're going to kill him, the event is already over, and the physical action is just details. The essential element there is whether the subject can conceive of a possibility of avoiding the fate; so long as there is a chance of avoidance, there is room for maneuver, and the event hasn't taken place.

I'd describe the event itself as reaching a point where capitulation becomes more attractive than more of whatever the person finds aversive, whether that's being dipped in ice water, having nails driven through the feet, dragged on a rope behind a camel, listening to sermons by Pat Robertson, having electric current applied randomly to different parts of the body, or being put in a sensory-deprivation chamber.

 

[opinterph]

Surprise is an event that takes place in the mind of the enemy commander.

Sun Tzu considered surprise to be a major component of strategy, while Clausewitz viewed it more as a tactical element that is evident in all military engagements.

what is the nature of the mental event which leads to capitulation?

I think in many cases capitulation results from uncertainty and trepidation, but it can also be precipitated by anguish or fatigue.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

Was the gom jabbar torture? It inflicted pain, but left only a memory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gom_jabbar

I think the Gom Jabbar itself was merely a weapon. The actual torture device was the box.

 

[TX-Beau]

I believe the actual torture device was the David Lynch film adaptation.

 

[HenryReardon]

I believe the actual torture device was the David Lynch film adaptation.

Really? I was a big fan of the book and sort of liked the movie - which is more than I can say for subsequent film versions.

 

[syntax]

Many here are defining torture in physical terms,

Torture is an event that takes place in the mind of your captive.


The activity involved is, at root, irrelevant; The question of what defines torture, then, is simplified: what is the nature of the mental event which leads to capitulation?

Kuli thanks for elevating this discussion.

kuli, i do think that something inflicted that is very painful to the body also is torture, not just the psychological torture you mention.
ding

I agree with h. Torture is a physical act. The "activity" is not irrelevant. The "mental event" is produced by the physical act or the threat of the physical act.

Not a bad definition at all Kul.

NG I've read your post, but truncated it in my reply. You make reference to Bowden, but it's never clear who is telling the story, who is doing the shooting and who is killed. How did the "intelligence officer" know that the one "suspect" (terrorist) was the most likely to have actionable information? Do you think the two people shot dead were "tortured?" Do you think that they might have been "innocent?" Do you think this event actually took place?

It would be helpful if you cited the book by Bowden that related this "story."

Kuli and others, I hope that we can keep this discussion going.

I'd like to also consider whether torture works, i.e that it produces actionable intelligence in the short and long term. And, whether other forms of interrogation could produce more useful information. So far, the "pro-torture" discussion in CE&P has been characterized by discredited assertions about its effectiveness and unrealistic scenarios of its applications.

The discussion on torture in CE&P has also demonstrated a disturbing element of sadism.

 

[jdoe4822]

I remember seeing an episode of Law and Order SVU a few years ago. They had a suspect who they knew was severely claustrophobic (or afraid of the dark). To get him to reveal where he had put a woman he had kidnapped, they locked him in a closet with no lights. Without debating the merits of using torture in that scenario, does that act constitute torture? The pain was purely psychological but in this guys case, if I remember right, he was literally screaming inside the closet to get out. Does that sort of manipulating someone's phobias qualify? I know they did some of this in the CIA.

 

[bluepheonix]

Suppose we talk about surprise as an element on the battlefield: what comes to mind is physical movement, getting people into place that the enemy doesn't know about, revealing a capability the enemy didn't know you had; we think of "pulling one off", or "putting one over" on the other guy -- we view it as our actions, in physical terms. But there's a simple maxim that defines what surprise really is; it goes something like this:

Surprise is an event that takes place in the mind of the enemy commander.

I feel you are confusing the adjective and verb of surprise. Also you incorrectly isolate the 'physical actions' of the first party from the psychological actions of the second party. To have the element of surprise is to be able to act in such a way that your forces induce surprise in the enemy, it is a conditional relationship. If the latter is not directly brought about by the former, eg if the other commander has an awareness of you strategy/tactics, then you do not have the element of surprise however much you physically move.

Many here are defining torture in physical terms, of whether it causes injury or does damage. But that's the simplistic sense of that first view of surprise on the battlefield -- and just as there, it's wrong. It should go this way:

Torture is an event that takes place in the mind of your captive.


The activity involved is, at root, irrelevant; what's relevant is the moment in the captive's mind when capitulation takes place and cooperation is obtained. The question of what defines torture, then, is simplified: what is the nature of the mental event which leads to capitulation?

Again you incorrectly isolate the parties involved. I fundamentally dispute that, as you say "The question of what defines torture, then, is simplified: what is the nature of the mental event which leads to capitulation?". Torture is physical or severe mental pain imposed by one party on a non-consenting second party for the purpose of punishing, abusing or inducing capitulation. It must be seen as the ACT, or the activity involved, rather than the mental rationale of the second party.

Take your definition, by which 'torture' is depended on capitulation. Under such a definition, torture could not fail, for as long as the mental forbearance of the second party remains intact, there has been no mental event leading to capitulation. No one could be tortured to death, no innocent or uninvolved individual could be tortured, as they lack to ability to capitulate, it therefore becomes patently absurd to define the actions as torture only in relation to their final outcome.

One cannot be tortured in this context without the direct actions of the 1st party.

 

[naked gent]

NG I've read your post, but truncated it in my reply. You make reference to Bowden, but it's never clear who is telling the story, who is doing the shooting and who is killed. How did the "intelligence officer" know that the one "suspect" (terrorist) was the most likely to have actionable information? Do you think the two people shot dead were "tortured?" Do you think that they might have been "innocent?" Do you think this event actually took place?

It would be helpful if you cited the book by Bowden that related this "story."

Sorry syntax. The Bowden piece which contains the story is called "The Dark Art of Interrogation" and it was in his book Road Work which is a compilation of articles he wrote for various publications.

As I looked back on the story it didn't happen exactly as I related it but I got the basics right. In the article the answer to how do you get a man to talk when telling him you are going to kill him if he don't isn't to kill him but to stand him in the middle of two other people who you do kill and once he sees that he spills his guts.

In another example if you put on electrode on a guys balls he may or may not talk based on his tolerance for pain (which for most exceeds what they think it is) but if you make him watch another guy's balls get zapped you'll find thats more effective.

The article does make clear that when attempting to elicit information from a prisoner fear trumps pain in effectiveness.

I hope that helps.

 

[hermanding]

i would imagine that anyone who endured - say a cigarette lighter flame to their balls for some period of time - would claim the actual act was torturous, due to the horrible pain involved - and just as torturous - if not more so - than say, bragging claims and mental,psycho torture done beforehand describing what was going to be done. i think it is psychological and physical as well
ding

 

[Kulindahr]

kuli, i do think that something inflicted that is very painful to the body also is torture, not just the psychological torture you mention.
ding

Read the OP again -- I've got it covered.

 

[Kulindahr]

Sun Tzu considered surprise to be a major component of strategy, while Clausewitz viewed it more as a tactical element that is evident in all military engagements.

I think Clausewitz, in that context, was dealing also with another maxim, that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. There's another I recall -- possibly Clausewitz -- to the effect that battle is the art of mastering the unexpected.

But those both deal with the unplanned. In terms of planned surprise, the point is that the plans, and the physical implementation thereof, are not what constitutes surprise; surprise is what happens to the enemy commander's sense of control.

I think in many cases capitulation results from uncertainty and trepidation, but it can also be precipitated by anguish or fatigue.

I read a little quip in a doctor's office, a look at torture from an economist's point of view; expectedly, it came down to cost/benefit.

 

[Kulindahr]

I agree with h. Torture is a physical act. The "activity" is not irrelevant. The "mental event" is produced by the physical act or the threat of the physical act.

I remember seeing an episode of Law and Order SVU a few years ago. They had a suspect who they knew was severely claustrophobic (or afraid of the dark). To get him to reveal where he had put a woman he had kidnapped, they locked him in a closet with no lights. Without debating the merits of using torture in that scenario, does that act constitute torture? The pain was purely psychological but in this guys case, if I remember right, he was literally screaming inside the closet to get out. Does that sort of manipulating someone's phobias qualify? I know they did some of this in the CIA.

Considering the above together, I'll throw out this definition of torture:

coercion by application of measures which the subject finds sufficiently intolerable that surrender occurs in the mind.

What the means are is, in one sense, irrelevant, because the event is in the mind; yet on the other hand, they are very relevant, because what one may find intolerable another may enjoy. Case in point: two guys I knew in college were in Navy ROTC. On their required cruises one summer, their respective ships crossed the equator, at which point there was a ritual for all who had not yet done so: in bare skin, they were dropped over the edge of the ship, which sailed off out of sight, leaving them scattered, treading water in the Pacific. To one of these guys, in spite of the fact that there was a ship's mate nearby, in heavy flotation gear and armed, the experience took every bit of willpower he had to not huddle in a ball and scream, while to the other it was utterly glorious, and his greatest wish was that no one else was around to spoil it.

That points up something said in one of the discussions of waterboarding, that the Mossad get results because they know their subjects.

 

[Kulindahr]

I feel you are confusing the adjective and verb of surprise. Also you incorrectly isolate the 'physical actions' of the first party from the psychological actions of the second party. To have the element of surprise is to be able to act in such a way that your forces induce surprise in the enemy, it is a conditional relationship. If the latter is not directly brought about by the former, eg if the other commander has an awareness of you strategy/tactics, then you do not have the element of surprise however much you physically move.

That nicely reinforces what I said: torture is an event which takes place in the mind of the subject.

Of course means are necessary to bring about that event, but they do not s=constitute the event. Off the top of my head, I'll venture this comparison: boiling is an event which takes place in the water. Granted, the water has to be receiving thermal input, but the thermal input is not the boiling.

Again you incorrectly isolate the parties involved. I fundamentally dispute that, as you say "The question of what defines torture, then, is simplified: what is the nature of the mental event which leads to capitulation?". Torture is physical or severe mental pain imposed by one party on a non-consenting second party for the purpose of punishing, abusing or inducing capitulation. It must be seen as the ACT, or the activity involved, rather than the mental rationale of the second party.

But there are no acts which can be defined, in and of themselves, as torture. Take the example of claustrophobia given above: locking someone in a small, dark closet make bring terror, or it may bring relaxation; it may be tortuous to the one, and pleasant to the other. Even being burned while living may not be torture; I recall footage of a Buddhist monk who burned himself in protest of something or other, and -- this gave everyone in the class total heebie-jeebies -- he say smiling as he burned.

Take your definition, by which 'torture' is depended on capitulation. Under such a definition, torture could not fail, for as long as the mental forbearance of the second party remains intact, there has been no mental event leading to capitulation. No one could be tortured to death, no innocent or uninvolved individual could be tortured, as they lack to ability to capitulate, it therefore becomes patently absurd to define the actions as torture only in relation to their final outcome.

One cannot be tortured in this context without the direct actions of the 1st party.

You may be touching on a distinction in purpose: inflicting the intolerable to achieve capitulation, vs. inflicting the intolerable without caring about capitulation.

But I think capitulation is the essential element in both. No sadist would inflict pain on someone who merely say and hummed, or as a certain Roman philosopher once did, warned that if his afflictor continued applying pressure as he did, the philosopher's arm would break, and once it broke, merely said, I told you that would happen. "Torture" depends on, and thus is defined by, what takes place in the mind of the subject/victim: whether as an attempt to extract information, or merely to cause agony, there is no torture unless the subject 'feels' tortured.

As an example there: at a summer camp, some of us were forced to swim under the dock on the lake, down in the cold and dark, in an attempt to get us to crack and make someone confess to a prank. When we came up from the first pass, one kid was crying, another was trembling and staring fixedly at his feet -- and another guy popped out of the water and onto the dock with the cry, "That was awesome!" Personally, I found it a little spooky, but interesting -- until on the third trip under I encountered long, rough weeds that wrapped around my arm and wouldn't let go; then it became terrifying -- instead of merely an exercise in something mildly unpleasant, it suddenly became an application of the near-intolerable.

 

[Kulindahr]

Sorry syntax. The Bowden piece which contains the story is called "The Dark Art of Interrogation" and it was in his book Road Work which is a compilation of articles he wrote for various publications.

As I looked back on the story it didn't happen exactly as I related it but I got the basics right. In the article the answer to how do you get a man to talk when telling him you are going to kill him if he don't isn't to kill him but to stand him in the middle of two other people who you do kill and once he sees that he spills his guts.

In another example if you put on electrode on a guys balls he may or may not talk based on his tolerance for pain (which for most exceeds what they think it is) but if you make him watch another guy's balls get zapped you'll find thats more effective.

The article does make clear that when attempting to elicit information from a prisoner fear trumps pain in effectiveness.

I hope that helps.

Fear -- and imagination. That's why the trick of mentioning things to someone else present, for example, engine cleaner, iron filings, and tomato juice -- can make someone crack without the items ever being present: it's both the terror of imagining of what might be done with those, and the fear that what may sound innocuous must not be, or these 'experts' in pain/whatever wouldn't be discussing them.

A gal friend in college used to get the shakes just thinking someone might bring a horror film to one of our occasional being-your-own-movie events -- while another friend and I watched them and tended to be bored. Just the thought of a progression of, or surprise by, scary things set her off.

 

[naked gent]

Fear -- and imagination.

Exactly right. Those who believe the level of pain inflicted is all that matters wouldn't be very good at interrogation and are probably telling you more about themselves than they even know.

An imaginative trick one particular Mossad interrogator uses which Bowden relates in the article is to have maybe 20 terrorists who you have rounded up all hooded and hungry and the interrogator says who will cooperate with me. Even if no one raises their hands he'll say 'good 8 of you...I'll start with you' and by doing that he begins to break them down as they come to believe someone else is talking so why hold out.

Success is getting information from those who already think you have it.