Is ‘enhanced interrogation’ torture? Yes, say those given small dose

The Vancouver Sun:

Those who approve “enhanced interrogation techniques” probably have a flawed idea of whether this constitutes torture, because few have felt the pain these methods can cause, researchers report.

A study that gave its subjects a mild taste of such interrogation methods as solitary confinement, sleep deprivation and extreme cold found most respondents characterized what they felt as torture. Those who did not experience these techniques but were told about them generally underestimated how much pain they might cause, the researchers found.

“Because policy-makers do not subject themselves to interrogation before assessing its permissibility, those who evaluate interrogation policies must predominantly rely on their subjective intuitions about how painful the experience seems,” the authors wrote in the journal Psychological Science.

Read the whole story: The Vancouver Sun