It’s found in the US Government’s official definition of torture as of 2004: “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or death.”

Equivalent in pain to death makes it pretty clear, I would say. If you don’t kill him, it’s not equivalent. What a disgusting definition.

As I’m sure you’re also aware, by signing Geneva our government’s definitions of torture are supposed to match the ones in the Conventions:

“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.”

That’s a big change from “pain of death.”

This is false. Have you any idea what has been done to prisoners in our camps? There have indeed been broken bones, diseases, etc.

“Enemy combatant isn’t covered under the Geneva Conventions.”

You can’t make up a new category and expect it to give you immunity. I can’t just go and kill someone because I decide to call them a flarp instead of a person. That’s the most ridiculous argument I’ve ever heard.

I’m quite surprised that you are so misinformed on this issue. Where do you get your information?

“anything which does not kill the prisoner”

Um, we waterboarded them. No broken bones, no pulled nails, no diseases or starving. Not sure where you’re getting that distinction. As you know, we do it to train some of our own elite troops. No Nazi doctor stuff or anything like that.

Yes. Our laws prohibit us from breaking the Geneva Conventions. If Cheney’s secret program contained elements which broke those Conventions, he’s toast, eventually. Even if the people we torture are from countries which did not sign the Geneva Conventions, we are bound due to the language in the Conventions itself. It’s a fact constantly twisted by the Right, but a fact just the same. The US Supreme Court in 2006 came to the same conclusion.

Cheney, Bush et al. did indeed try to grant themselves retroactive immunity in 2007 from such prosecutions. I am supremely confident, however, that such immunities will be rendered moot by a future ruling of the high court. On a similar vein, the definition of torture will no longer mean “anything which does not kill the prisoner” (as it has only since Bush) and will be returned to the previous definition, once again differentiating us from the countries we fought so hard against, and once again allowing us to prosecute for such actions as waterboarding just as we did so many times in WWII and Vietnam.

Wait, what are the war crimes charges you’re speaking of? The torturing stuff?