Have your say. People will listen.

[stinglikeabee]

(First seen on kadymae's LJ, and originally begun by ldragoon)

From Frontline's programme on Torture:

The Aug. 1, 2002 memo, sent from Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee to Alberto R. Gonzales, counsel to the president, parsed the language of a 1994 statute that ratified the United Nations Convention against Torture and made the commitment of torture a crime. To be torture, the memo concluded, physical pain must be "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." And inflicting that severe pain, according to the memo, must have been the "specific intent" of the defendant to amount to a violation of the statute.

The United Nations Convention Against Torture:

...torture means 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.

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

Countries that have reservations and declarations regarding this statute. Prepare to be disappointed.

Torture is to degrade another human being, to deny another's very right to exist. No matter how many editions of the interrogation manuals there are, how many names used to mask the intent, or how many new signed pieces of legislation there are - torture is a crime against humanity and cannot be justified.