Quote Originally Posted by Oneironaut View Post
As I see it, your argument is that waterboarding isn't torture if someone can stop it by providing the information desired. Am I right?
That is part of it. The other important part is that it does not induce agonizing pain, just the threat of agonizing pain. It causes extreme fear, as does criminal court, arrest, and awareness of being in prison. Criminal defendants claim their hearts beat so fast during trials that it is like they are on crack. Are criminal trials "torture"?

While causing mere fear, waterboarding can be called off. If you put a rubber knife up to somebody's Achilles tendon and say, "Tell me what city is about to be nuked and where I can find the person with the nuke or else I will cut your Achilles tendon," you have not tortured the person. You have scared the Hell out of him with the thought of being tortured. There is a huge difference.

American special forces are waterboarded as part of their training. Do you claim that the U.S. military has a policy of torturing its special forces? If so, then is basic training torture? Are soldiers tortured when they are forced to exercise near the point of exhaustion? Those things actually involve extreme pain in every case.

Quote Originally Posted by Oneironaut View Post
And yes, terrorism is torture, but again, that doesn't have very much to do with the specific conversation. We all know how you feel about terrorism, but throwing out that "terrorism is torture" in every conversation that has to do with waterboarding (or torturing terrorists) doesn't negate the fact that waterboarding is torture.
My point is that we need to prevent real torture even if part of doing that is scaring the Hell out of terrorists who can call off what is scaring them.

However, there do need to be very high standards concerning who gets waterboarded. I don't think every or even any minor suspect should be waterboarded. If a well known Al Qaeda leader is captured on a battle field and there is strong evidence that he knows of a pending terrorist attack, he needs to be waterboarded. So far, that is how it has been done.