Does the United States Actually Torture People?
by Patrick Todd, past Editor-In-Chief My personal definition of torture is anything that causes permanent or serious damage to the body. Examples would include cutting off parts of someones body. I would actually be a little less stringent than that and include stuff like pulling fingernails, breaking bones and electrocution that people would arguably fully recover from into the category of torture. From a practical standpoint, it has been shown that when you induce massive amounts of pain, the recipient of torture will generally tell you what you want to hear and may not actually be true or useful. During the Cold War, Communist governments often would torture people into confessing crimes (being an enemy of the state, for example) whether or not that would actually be true. Now, if you are actually trying to ascertain whether this person did indeed commit the act for which he is being accused, a forced and possibly false confession is not useful. The U.S. conducts interrogations gene
