Stating that waterboarding is not torture is like saying that fellatio is not a sexual act, or that embezzlement is not theft.
每个酷刑的倡导者都喜欢“如果”这个词:“如果一个孩子被绑架了，如果绑架者拒绝正常的劝说，如果孩子的生命危在旦下，如果，如果，如果”等等。
Always, images of abduction and children and death. Always, the appeal to the crowd: "The children! Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children!"
And we are then expected not only to stop debating at that point and side with the torture advocate, but to /stop thinking altogether/.
How about a few IFs of our own?
- IF we adopt the stance that waterboarding is not torture, what will stop enemies from using it on our own soldiers, our kidnapped aid workers ... our children? After all, by the standards we have set for our own, they are not in fact torturing our kidnapped people at all, are they?
——假设我们决定背弃日内瓦公约，开始接受一种酷刑，那么社会还会开始忽视哪些行为?物理切割?疤痕和品牌?强奸吗?
最后一个IF(如果)——因为我们现在都被媒体训练去接受Lewis Carroll的格言“我说三遍就是真的”——如果我们开始接受水刑，以及后来的其他形式的酷刑作为常规的审讯程序，那么多久我们就会抛弃所有其他的法理保障措施，比如有一个同辈陪审团的审判、无罪推定、人身保护令、正当程序和传闻证据?
I just find myself wondering how long it will be before, for want of ethics, through our becoming too lazy and apathetic and "couldn't be bothered" to uphold principles of fairness our ancestors fought and died for, our civilisations just sleepwalk their way back into barbarism.

This sounds like a round-a-bout way, and polite way, to discuss our military's barbaric behavior. I would say, imposing your will on someone who is unable to defend themselves constitutes torture for modern society. I would hope that anyone who feels that progress had been made over the centuries would also believe that we must make these definitions more sensitive, rather than revert to tactics we have long since abandoned.

亚历克斯，"如果"这件事很能说明问题。我想知道如果我们把士兵划分为"准备好了酷刑"或"合格的酷刑"是否会有不同的感觉。正如你提到的，酷刑也可以让其他人做同样的事，我想知道施刑者是如何被选择的?他们是否接受过特殊的训练，是否获得过特殊的奖章或徽章?这是一件随你一路晋升的特别的事情吗?难道所有这些阶段都不太可能得到政府的批准，还是我们都同意五角大楼是这些组织决定的灵魂仲裁者?

Yes, IF torturing uncovers a terrorist plot and saves lives, you could argue that torture is not wrong. But what if torturing doesn't uncover anything at all? What is the justification for this vile act then? The fact that there might have been a terrorist plot? That leaves a lot of room for justifying all kinds of behaviour towards people, just based on suspicion.
另一个，如果，如果我们错误地虐待无辜的人，认为他们是有害的(就像许多关塔那摩监狱的囚犯，他们被虐待，被发现是无辜的，然后从监狱释放)，我们不伤害无辜的人，同时把自己暴露在危险中，因为那些人可能会觉得需要报复吗?那么，我们不就带来了一种非常现实的威胁吗?我们的行动旨在防止恐怖主义的危险，但由于我们对无辜人民的完全不公正对待，结果可能会鼓励更多的人对我们采取恐怖主义行动?

It strikes me that we struggle so much with the ethics of torture in interrogation but that we rarely discuss (in the US?) the use of lethal force by police officers. In the case of police the extreme case does present itself, and it seems the cultural consensus is that someone threatening others with a weapon can be killed, not just made to feel pain.
虽然我反对酷刑，但将这一伦理应用到警察工作中似乎意味着永远不要施加痛苦，不管嫌疑人施加了什么威胁。

I think - and I think this is demonstrated by humans daily - we can rationalize anything. It is not difficult to imagine the worst since the news and the tube attribute daily to our worst antics. This question of torture however ignores the torturer. The individual given the job of inflicting the pain, the masked hangman. How many parents have no problem with that individual being their son, or, perish the thought, their daughter? Exactly what are we doing to that person? Are we not sentencing this person to a lifetime of horror as well? Based on recent testimony by those so ordained, they suffer as well.

I don't question right, why do you?
Why are you so confused?
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MJA

The police have to make quick judgements as and when a threat arrives and often at a time when their own lives are at risk. Must be difficult to stay rationale.

我仍然不相信任何形式的酷刑会有效，即使这是为了更大的利益。我们不能为了众人的利益而牺牲或伤害一个人的生命。酷刑的受害者，他们的沮丧只会导致更复杂的心理影响。顺便说一下，这篇文章很棒，我特别喜欢Kiefer Sutherland在《24小时》中的角色与你的主题相关的类比。

It seems that when making a case for the morality of torture that the utility of torture, for gathering information, is used a a supportive argument. Shouldn't the ethics of an action be considered separate from it's utility?

What IF the guy you've decided is the kidnapper didn't take the child? What IF the guy who does the torturing ends up with the type of Post Traumatic Stress that makes him kill 10 children? What IF by crossing the line and becoming torturers, ourselves, we are no different, morally or rationally, than the terrorists we are seeking to eliminate?

Torture is wrong, and to rationalize it is the case for all the worlds current trivialities.

For an interesting follow-up, a book recently came out by a philosopher at UWO entitled "The Absolute Violation: Why Torture Must be Prohibited". It's a comprehensive refutation of the arguments in favour of torture, including act and rule utilitarianism, as well as "dirty hands" reasoning, "what if" thought experiments, and the like. Just thought I'd bring it up as an interesting resource, given the discussion above.

I would like to think I'm a compassionate person, so it does trouble me a little bit that I can't shake the notion that sometimes torture could be the lesser of 2 evils. Although I wouldn't call this pro-torture, I have been labeled as such by others. My one question that hasn't been answered sufficiently (for my own tastes, anyway) is where does the regress stop? Could it not be argued reasonably well that imprisonment alone is torture? The broad definition given for torture earlier was "severe mental anxiety and suffering." I would, I believe, trade the option of 50 years in prison for 1 year of water boarding (having never experienced either, that might seem week, but the point works for me).
So, sure, water boarding is torture. Is everyone here agreeing that people who have committed crimes can't have anything inflicted on them that someone could call torture? Doesn't seem like a fair argument to draw your own arbitrary line and lambaste everyone who thinks it should be drawn somewhere else. Everyone here has been respectful, and thanks for that. What a great website.
How do we agree on where the line should be drawn?

折磨从来都不是好事。我们应该废除它，让俄国人保留它。

Philosophy as applied logically to a semantic ideal world works just splendidly, but any philosophy that does not take into account the volatility of physical reality will always fall short of doing anything but making idealists feel good about themselves. Are pain and torture abhorrent? certainly. Are they entirely necessary in some few instances? you bet. Does the natural world give an inkling as to what is philosophically sound in theory? No. If you kidnap my daughter, I will most definitely torture you until you tell me where she is. We do what we must in desperate situations, no matter our personal bents.

多年来，我一直在思考这个问题。我有专业的军队审讯员为我工作，从那以后我还和其他人打过交道。我在巴格达建立并运营了一年多的审讯机构。I can tell you a few things:
1. Regarding the utilitarian argument: torture is ineffective, or at best no more effective than properly done interrogation. If you put a person into a position to say anything just to get you to stop, that is exactly what you'll get.
2. There are exactly two ethical systems in the world: The End Justifies the Means, or The Ends and Means Must be Justified Separately. And the first is really no ethics at all, since the purpose of ethics is to limit behavior, and the first leaves no actual limits. Torture advocates fall in that group.
3. On a philosophical level, once you accept that people are not just objects, the ability to justify torture disappears.
4. I train soldiers - the consequences of training torturers are simply unacceptable.
5. In any case, we've signed and ratified the Geneva conventions that forbid torture - which by Article 6 of the constitution makes those provisions the supreme law of the land. So as a practical matter the debate is - or should be - long since over.

总之，酷刑不起作用。没有任何证据表明我们从刑讯逼供中获得了有用的情报。无论政客和好莱坞如何试图说服你。联邦调查局一直在使用不需要严刑拷打的技术，这些技术要有效得多。这种方法在时间紧迫的情况下可能没有帮助，但酷刑也没有帮助。
我们这些为了获取信息而采访别人的人都知道，我做了多年的审计师，你与个人建立联系，然后就会把内脏吐露出来。你攻击他们，他们就会反抗。

I heard your program on torture today, 3/20/12, for the first time, and thought it was one of the worst programs you ever aired. If you start with an untrue premise, then your conclusions will be wrong.
You accept that the purpose of torture is to elicit information. I dispute your assertion. Torture is a political act. Its purposes are twofold: one is to scare the general population into behaving in ways congenial to a regime; and the second is to have those tortured confess to activities claimed by the regime in order to strengthen the regime's credibility. These purposes have been true since the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, the SS Gestapo, and so on.
此外，有研究表明，那些故意做出可能导致酷刑的行为的人比被围捕的无辜的人更能承受酷刑。人们相信，前者对自己的生活有一定的控制权，而后者没有的人会告诉他们的“审问者”任何事情来阻止虐待。在大多数情况下，酷刑会导致错误的信息，审讯者不可能知道他们收到的哪些陈述是真的或假的，除非他们让人们承认截然不同的陈述——这种情况也会发生。
The psychologist who called into your program was absolutely correct when he said torture leads to physiological changes. These changes may have to be discerned with CAT scans, MRIs, or neurological tests rather than by bruises easily visible by the naked eye, but often the neurological damage is more permanent and destructive.
Torture should never be permissible. I would be glad to know of any cases you know of where torture led to the saving of lives.

Even questioning the ethics of torture is horrifically unethical to me.
We sure have a long Way to go.
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To me, the strongest real world case for torture is the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He was allegedly the architect of the September 11 attacks as well other terrorist activities. He was captured in 2003 and WAS tortured by the United States. For the sake of argument, let's assume the following 3 statements.
A) There was overwhelming evidence that he was responsible for the 9-11 attacks.
B) There was a significant chance that he knew about current plots, as well important structural and functional information about al Qaeda.
C) He refused to give up substantial information through normal interrogation methods.
If these 3 facts are true, I think it was OK to torture him. This man helped to kill thousands of people already, and he MIGHT have possessed information that could help us stop future attacks. I'm sure the torture was awful and may have destroyed him as a person. But it's very hard for me to feel bad for a mass murderer.
我承认，如果A, B或C中有一个是假的，那么酷刑就站不住脚了。此外，我敢肯定美国对一些案件的证据要弱得多的人使用酷刑，我不确定这是否合理。