BeAChooser, any pain or discomfort forcibly inflicted upon people to make them bend to your will is torture. That's what the word means.
Only because a group of potentially fallible humans defined it that way. But perceptions of morality can (and have) changed over time and from one culture to the next. From one circumstance to the next. Maybe the definition of torture is too broad in this age when small groups of terrorists can potentially kill tens of thousands or even millions of innocent people.
The group of humans who defined torture in the way you quote is also a group of humans that seems to think that all torture is equally bad. They seem to think that temporarily causing discomfort to one person is worse than allowing the murder of thousands of people to occur because you don't apply temporary discomfort. You appear to subscribe to that view yourself. Which I think is just plain silly. It's moral equivalence at it's worst.
You bandie the word torture around knowing full well what image it conjures (flayed skin, pulled teeth, electricity cooking genitals) in the minds of most people. You do this knowing full well that the enhanced interrogation techniques that were approved for use by the CIA, like waterboarding, are nothing like that. You never mention that strict guidelines were established on employing the enhanced techniques. You never mention that only THREE people ... three DEMONSTRABLY VERY BAD PEOPLE ... were waterboarded by the US in the last 6 years, despite capturing thousands of people suspected of being al-Qaeda. You never mention that those three were specifically waterboarded because they had resisted conventional techniques, because it was thought they knew information about other serious ongoing plots, and because learning about those plots was considered time urgent. You hide these facts from readers. You'd never mention them if our side didn't bring them in these threads. You'd be content to tell only half the story.
And when someone points out that people in positions to know the facts, such as CIA sources, state that waterboarding has worked and saved peoples lives, your side of this debate simply ignores that evidence. And for the most part, is not interested in finding out if the CIA is right. Some of you, even knowing that evidence exists, continue to act like it's an established fact that waterboarding doesn't work. And then misrepresent what our side of this debate actually believe. I don't think that behavior reflects very well on your side of this debate.
To be blunt, I don't think you hold the moral high ground here. It seems to me that your side is willing to let thousands die who could be saved by just applying temporary pain or discomfort to a bad person. And I think that's because your side doesn't really value human life as much as you claim. Which is perhaps why some members on your side (as seen in this thread btw) callously dismiss the possibility that a fetus is a human being.
In fact, your side believes in that so strongly, that you elected a man to be President who was the ONLY Senator in the Illinois legislature to vote to prevent doctors from giving medical care to a fetus that somehow manages to survive an abortion, no matter how late term the abortion. So apparently, our President and some on your side don't even think a "fetus" is a human being even one second before it is actually born. Which in my opinion is complete nonsense. It certainly is inconsistent with laws that allow for murder charges to be filed in cases where an unborn child is killed ... laws that democrats helped pass.
