It's conservative in the sense that people and governments have been torturing for millenium, so if you're interested in conserving past values then torture is more conservative than liberal. Come to think of it, has there ever been a major world power/empire that didn't utilize torture?

And the polls say that a majority of Americans support torture; of course, we call it different labels like 'enhanced interrogation' or 'rendition', but we're basically a pro-torture state.

Here's a Gallup poll from just this week that finds a clear majority of Americans support torture:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/118006/Slim-Majority-Wants-Bush-Era-Interrogations-Investigated.aspx

I don't think most Conservatives agree that the practices of the early Bush Administration meet the definition of "torture". From my point of view, two stories in the news today remind us of what torture really looks like. The debate reminds me somewhat of the pro- and anti-abortion factions debating when life begins, and I think the torture debate will drag on in a similar manner.

My strong sense is that there was lethally dirty business- homicide under color of authority- going on at Bagram, its annexes and outliers, from late 2001- possibly before the legal membo jumbo.

I submit that any treatment known to induce madness (extended solitary, sleep deprivation, drugs) or pain that becomes intense thru continuation, repetition and combination (stress positions, hypothermia, sensory overload/deprivation) is torture. Torture is a blight on our national honor, whether it's controlled electroshock taught at the School of the Americas, or reverse engineered onto prisoners from SERE versions that teach torture resistance to volunteers.

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William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

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"Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, 'We see,' your sin remains." (John 9:41)

@YankeeSailor:

It's really quite simple. Torture is the use of physically coercive methods to psychologically break down a prisoner. Whether the ends are information collection, punishment, or revenge don't change the basic definition of what torture is. At the very best and giving the benefit of the doubt, one can say that the Bush Administration used minimal torture to break down the psyches of prisoners, but the fact remains that it was torture and was illegal.

If and when Sean Hannity gets waterboarded for charity, it won't be torture because he is not a prisoner and is giving his consent. Instead, it will be a demonstration of a torture technique.

Are you getting this, or should I type slower?

Thank you for being one of the few conservatives that are saying what needs to be said, however it is that you define your conservatism. I've finally made the decision to leave the Republican Party because of the pro-torture stance I am seeing from the majority of GOP and GOP aligned commentators. It was the final straw; I've become increasingly disgusted at the subordination of the principle of Liberty to the Religious Right/Cultural "Conservative" movement, and the ever increasing tilt of the party towards the deranged.

I have one point of disagreement: still-believers shouldn't wince, we should scream our bloody heads off. We should be ready to put our politics aside and call for a full and complete investigation, letting the chips fall where they may. I further suggest that Patrick Fitzgerald be appointed to lead that investigation.

Marcos El Mano already got this, but let me try in a way that focuses more on this question of real "severity of techniques":

Torture is the attempt to force someone to speak by subjecting him or her to the unbearable - unbearable discomfort, unbearable distress, unbearable fear - so that the person feels he or she has no option but to speak to stop what is being done, or actually can't stop himself or herself from speaking to make it stop.

What a lot of people have been doing, sometimes with complete sincerity, is to accept the effort, which requires and includes the attempt at unbearability, while asking questions about how bad this or that sort of means are. (While believing - or at least claiming - that "of course they're against torture.") This is accepting and walking down and standing on the road while asking, “Is thirty feet down the road torture? Is fifty? Is twenty? How about two steps back? A reasonable man could draw a line between twenty-five and thirty.” The problem is that the entire road is torture; the entire road is the attempt at forcing someone to talk by - necessarily - imposition of the unbearable upon the subject. Or else why do it? It has to reach that level in order to "work." And the means are chosen for the attempt to reach it in the person.

That, the attempted unbearable, is the level to judge any means by - not the apparent characteristics of the means separate from any question of unbearability.

The question of the means being "only mildly harsh" is otherwise as meaningful and worthy of moral pause as trying to parse just what level of insertion, in millimeters, really is or isn't "sex". If you're there at all, not only is it sex, sex is the reason you're there.

What makes all of this downright ugly is that the nature of the effort is tacit in what at least many torture defenders want to have happen. There is a doublethink involved. "That's at the level of just a college hazing" - when what they are trying to clear the way to have happen is no college hazing, even in their own minds.

@Marcos El Malo

Your definition is, "Torture is the use of physically coercive methods to psychologically break down a prisoner."

The UN's definition is, "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."

The Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture's definition is, "any act intentionally performed whereby physical or mental pain or suffering is inflicted on a person for purposes of criminal investigation, as a means of intimidation, as personal punishment, as a preventive measure, as a penalty, or for any other purpose. Torture shall also be understood to be the use of methods upon a person intended to obliterate the personality of the victim or to diminish his physical or mental capacities, even if they do not cause physical pain or mental anguish."

And Flugendorf's definition is, "the attempt to force someone to speak by subjecting him or her to the unbearable - unbearable discomfort, unbearable distress, unbearable fear "

The UN says "severe" pain or suffering, Flugendorf says torture's anything "unbearable", and the ICPPT says "any" pain or suffering, and you say torture's anything that's "plysically coercive". Just in this forum it seems to me there's a broad gap between the extremes in definitions.

Thank you all for confirming my point.

@YankeeSailor:

You see your point confirmed by the things you quoted. I can't agree. It takes a magnifying glass brought very close in on the different wordings - and possibly with blinders around the circumference of the glass - to see, in the different wordings, anything but a very strong similarity and agreement in implication between them.

And it is outright impossible to discern in them a doorway whereunder the practices discussed in the memos would be something other than torture - or to discern in them a specified alternate area for harsh treatment intended to overcome the will of the prisoner but that isn't to be considered torture.

@YankeeSailor:

You're trying the same arguments and parsing techniques that the OLC used in the memos. All of the quotes you used say basically the same thing. If word play and tortured logic is your best defense of torture, you really got nothing. If you are correct that most conservatives don't believe that what was done constitutes torture, then the conservative movement is effectively dead and we have lost our way.

I'm not arguing that most Conservatives have settled their minds that what was done is okay. I believe that most conservatives acknowledge there are important moral questions on both sides of the issue.

Also, before we get painting with too broad a brush, it's useful to remember that all the techniques in the "torture memos" were reviewed by a bipartisan group of Congressmen, including the Speaker of the House, and there are no reports of significant objections being raised. This is not a Conservative problem, it's an American problem.

It helps to consider that many of the people calling themselves "conservative" these days would more accurately be described as right-wing authoritarians. There is a difference.

The guy eating a cheeseburger is not a vegetarian, no matter how loudly he claims to be one.

If you don't want conservatives to become the pro-torture party, then prosecute those who were responsible for the torture or shut your mouth and think. If you want the "never again" moral feeling to output a policy, then take actions to ensure that the conditions that caused WWII don't occur again. If the world did to America today what the world did to Germany PRE-WWII, America would go to war with the world. This includes taking away America's military and making America pay for the war debts of other countries. Conservatives better stop acting like they are invisible. America wanted those responsible for 9/11 dead; that is why we supported war. Instead, you conservatives decided to ignore the will of the people and go after someone who was an ally and would have supported Americas efforts to kill Bin Laden. The days before you executed Saddam he stated that you were traitors, which shows that his heart was loyal to us up until that point. THINK BEFORE YOU RESPOND TO ME, THEN THINK AGAIN. TO DENY ME IS TO DENY THE HOLY SPIRIT AND YOU WILL NOT BE FORGIVEN.