Torture

The United Nations General Assembly defines torture as "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." It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions." It excludes pain and suffering caused by lawful sanctions, such as corporal or capital punishment. The definition of 'torture' is subject to considerable debate, however, due to the ethical and political questions surrounding torture.

Under the U.N. General Assembly definition, if capital punishment were ordered through a legal process, it would not qualify as torture, but as pain and suffering incidental to a judicial sanction. The concept of "cruel and unusual punishment", while in the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, is by no means universal. While there was much outcry when Singapore ordered caning as part of a judicial sentence, there was no major outcry that it violated international law.

Torture in classical times
Ancient peoples are known to have inflicted extreme pain as a punishment, without necessarily intending death. Some means of capital punishment were meant to be extremely painful, such as crucifixion, impalement, boiling alive, being torn apart by draft animals, etc., were intended to be fatal, to cause a long agonizing death.

Physical force
The classical methods include whipping and beating, abnormal stretching of joints, burning, and cutting. Obviously, these usually have a significant probability of doing permanent damage.

Water has been used as the basis for many forms of torture, ranging from often-fatal forcing of water down a funnel or tube in the throat, to submersion, to simulated drowning with the method of waterboarding. While the forced swallowing methods distend organs, the basis of most of these methods is to cause oxygen deprivation, which triggers reflexive fear and panic.

Psychological
Psychological pressures can be divided into those directed against the subject, and those directed at persons valued by the subject.

Individual
A basic approach to psychological interrogation, which is probably licit at one end and torture at the other end of the spectrum, involves disorientation. Methods can include preventing sleep, sensory deprivation, exposure to extreme sensory stimuli, etc.

It should be noted that psychological interrogation can be effective but not fall into terror. Some guidelines for interrogators include being correct and maintaining a position of authority, but not necessarily cruel. There are repeated anecdotal reports of interrogators, working in the Middle East, who can totally disorient a prisoner expecting torture by formally serving him coffee or tea, perhaps bread and salt in the guest ritual, and then courteously but relentlessly asking questions.

A sense of omniscience is critical in psychological interrogation, which often comes from analysts listening to recordings of every interrrogation, then searching through data bases to find correlations, true names, etc., with which the prisoner can be confronted. See biographical references.

On the other extreme, however, simulated executions, in which the subject is tied to a post, orders given to a firing squad, but blank ammunition fired, qualifies as psychological torture to most observers.

While South Vietnamese interrogators certainly did use physical torture against Nguyen Thi, one assessment is that the most important information gained was from principally psychological methods. While the South Vietnamese use of torture did result (eventually) in Tai's admission of his true identity, it did not provide any other usable information. The South Vietnamese played the key role in cracking Tai's cover story, but it was their investigation and analysis that put the pieces together to make a solid and incontrovertible identification of Tai, not their use of torture, that scored this success. A sensitive, adept line of questioning that confronted Tai with this evidence and offered him a deal--like the offer by his torturers to exchange admission of his identity for consideration in a notional prisoner exchange--would almost certainly have achieved the same result. Without doubt, the South Vietnamese torture gave Tai the incentive for the limited cooperation he gave to his American interrogators, but it was the skillful questions and psychological ploys of the Americans, and not any physical infliction of pain, that produced the only useful (albeit limited) information that Tai ever provided.

Theory
During the Algerian War, the counterinsurgency advisor, Roger Trinquier, wrote, in his book, Modern Warfare, "Modern warfare requires the unconditional support of the populace. This support must be maintained at any price. Here again, terrorism plays its role. An unceasing watch is exercised over all the inhabitants. Any suspicion or indication of lack of submission is punishable by death, quite often preceded by horrible torture." Trinquier was one of the theorists that believed that terrorists would be deterred by even more intense terror directed at them.

The use of terror by the French, however, may have allowed the nationalist FLN movement to win, even the FLN itself practiced terrorism and torture. French methods prevented natives opposed to the FLN from seeking French protection.

During the Great Terror, a distinction was made between "informal" torture, such as beatings, and officially authorized torture. It was only in 1937, at the Zinoviev Trial, where authorization had been given by a order from Stalin, not widely disseminated until 1939. Conquest observes that Stalin himself was a great believer in terror, but "torture is not a complete explanation when it comes to the public confessions of the oppositionists...But critics were right in saying torture alone could not have produced the public self-humiliation of a whole series of Stalin's enemies, when returned to health and given a platform. We shall see, in fact, that some accused withdrew in closed court confessions obtained by torture.

Prohibition against torture in international law
Prohibition against torture and other degrading punishments is specifically coded in many articles of international law. Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 1950 , Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966 , and Article 4 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights 2000.

Religious, professional and philosophical views
A great number of religious bodies oppose torture. In the United States, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture counts as members a variety of denominations including many Unitarians, Presbyterians, Catholics, Methodists and others. Humanists generally oppose torture.

The American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association have passed resolutions banning their members from participating in torture, although they may provide medical care to those being tortured. The American Psychological Association has passed a resolution that bans psychologists from participating in a variety of the stronger interrogation techniques that border on torture.