Defining acceptable technique

james_nicoll was talking about Michael Ignatieff (vis-a-vis this NYTM article).

Ignatieff, among other blather, says that we're going to have to accept torturing people. It's a trifle more dressed up, but it's the "ticking bomb" nonsense, clothed in delicate terms of, "Stress," and "disorienting" and the like.

So it occurs to me, as he says none of this is torture, and Alberto Gonzales, and the like, all say we don't use torture, we just use "means of, mild, physical coercion," that I (yes I, the rabid anti-torture hippie-interrogator) can see a way to make it something I won't condemn out of hand.

Those at the top. Those who have to approve the legislation (as well as the hacking authority, so some upper level, Colonels and suchlike will be included) have to test the approved methods.

If waterboarding isn't torture, then let them show it. We'll waterboard them. Someone who has no reason to go easy on them will get to subject them to every method they want to approve. If they say 1 hour of stress-position A is acceptable (say hanging from the bars in handcuffs, stripped naked and doused with cold water) then they get one hour and 15 minutes (to show that we are stopping well short of the point of you know, "actual" torture). The times in question can be kept classified, but some oversight committee will get to see that it's actually done.

Each approved method has to be renewed every year, and prior to renewal it has to be re-administered to all those who would be in position to authorise it.

After all, it isn't as if this was torture.