The law in an ass, and always has been as it is an imperfect creation
of an imperfect institution put in pl;ace by imperfect beings.
Nevertheless, the law determines what is legal. Either you argue that
every POTUS, ever chairman of the Joint Cheifs, and much of the senior
command staff are criminals because they approved and implemented SERE
and SERE = torture, or you can not argue that identical practices are
criminal torture. There are many places where the common usage
definition of a term does not match the legal definition, but in
matters of law it is the legal definition that is controlling.
Matthew
On May 16, 2009, at 9:55 PM, Jeff Miles wrote:
Yes, I've heard this argument, and it's stupid. Because we torture
our own servicemen and call it training doesn't change what it is.
However, it is a good game. I wonder how many other definitions we
can change to suit our legal needs?
Jeff M
On May 16, 2009, at 4:52 PM, Matthew Taylor wrote:
The problem is the legal reasoning that says it was not torture is
quite sound - the key being that as I understand it we did nothing
that we do not do to our own servicemen in the resistance portion
of SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) training. If
the assumption is that we are not torturing our own servicemen,
then doing the same to others might be extremely poor judgement in
the circumstances, might be held to be wrong for a variety of
reasons, but it still would not be torture.
Matthew
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