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OK, so I had another cup of coffee and am I little less cranky. There has been a miscommunication here (my fault). It’s not the act itself I am referring to, it’s the context in which it has been applied.





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Here is an example: Police have a man in custody who they believe has kidnapped a child, past experience with this man has also led them to believe that the child is currently in grave danger. If the police beat the information out of him, in order to save a life, are they torturing him? I don’t believe they are. Even in the definition you posted, inflicting pain to save lives isn’t listed as torture.




The primary definition in that dictionary example (under noun) specifically relates to inflicting pain as a means of obtaining information -- whether it saves lives, increases profits, or affects classroom behaviour, as examples, the reason is irrelevant.

That's one of the problems with torture. You either commit this type of act as a nation, or you stand against it. Torturing "rarely, unless there's a really, really good reason" puts a nation in the former camp, not the latter, no matter how much it may seem that way.

Apart from physical torture's long and proven history of providing inconsistent results in general, why would we want to advocate use of a method (waterboarding) in which brain damage of the suspect (through oxygen deprivation) over sustained use is a near certainty? This defies all logic to me. To use a technique which has a large probability of causing negative effects on the very organ responsible for retrieving the information you wish to access is illogical. It would be one thing if waterboarding was just about inflicting the fear of drowning alone, but these other aspects make it repugnant.