Does Theissen Heart Torture?
January 21st, 2010 
Politics 
Chris
I was watching the recent interview on CNN between Christine Amanpour and Mark Theissen on the subject of dealing with terrorist suspects and detainees and at one point Theissen’s reasoning left me frantically scratching my head as I tried to fathom his logic. More specifically, in the clip Amanpour takes Theissen to task for supporting waterboarding and so for supporting torture as a consequence. Theissen’s denies that water boarding is torture (it’s merely an EIT). Fine, the “arguments” for this position are commonly known at this point, but Theissen’s specific way of refuting Amanpour’s argument was a new one and it really let me shaking my head. Check below.
Watch the clip, starting around the 5 minute mark.
Now that you’ve watched it,
let’s get straight Theissen’s two arguments.
First: Theissen argues that EITs are “not torture” because they don’t produce any lasting pain or presumably (because this is the commonly used argument) any physical damage to the interrogated subject. He then throws a fit because Amanpour compares the US use of waterboarding to the Khmer Rouge’s use of waterboarding (which is acknowledged there to be torture), pointing out that the torture museum in Cambodia has the water boarding used by the Khmer Rouge presented as an exhibit (it is considered torture there). Theissen strongly disagrees that this is relevant, because the Khmer Rouge’s version of simulated drowning included submerging the subject’s body or head fully in water. The US version EIT doesn’t call for the subject to be fully immersed. So the use version is an EIT, not torture as it was used by the Khmer Rouge.
Alright, stop. Now I’m not doubting that having your head or body immersed makes things even more psychologically terrorizing than they would be if you were not immersed. But being immersed surely doesn’t cause any serious pain or lasting physical damage to the subject. So how in the world is _this_ the distinction that makes the US version an “EIT” and the Khmer Rouge’s version torture? Theissen’s whole distinction is based on the need for pain or physical damage to be present in torture whereas it is not present in an EIT. But he then draws the distinction between EIT/torture in the Khmer Rouge case without the need for his own suggested condition. I was actually shocked that Amanpour didn’t pick up on this.
Theissen’s second argument was just stupid: the Khmer Rouge killed a lot of people when it interrogated its prisoners, the US did not. This is true. But it’s hard to understand why the viciousness of the torturers matters with respect to whether a particular technique used is torture or not.
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