What is the meaning torture?

Answer 1

to me, torture means to inflect as much pain as possible while keeping the poor victim alive as long as possible. If you want to know what i think the worst possible torture is, is seeing your family being tortured to death, or, this is my nightmare, but anyways, seeing the two people you love most in the world, you girlfriend, mom, sister, grandma, best friend, etc., and seeing them hanging over a big bowl of acid, and you have to choose which one lives, and which one dies. Sad, isn't it? i almost cry at the thought of my mom and brother there because i know my mom will say to let my brother live, then i would have to choose... Torture is about the torturer not the subject. Torture is about control over a person, a group of people, or a situation. Dictionary.com defines torture as "the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty." This is a literal definition, but it is only a partial one, and is not exactly correct. Recent studies examining the torturers of the past, from the Khmer Rouge Chief Interrogator at S-21 (Kaing Guek Eav) to those of the Stalin regime and Nazi Germany, new light has been shed to illuminate the fact that torturers are not the sadists they were formerly believed to be. In fact, hundreds of interviews and years of study show that sadism is antithetical to the goals of torture. Torture is an act or series of acts used for causing pain, but the pain is not always physical. The pain can be emotional, mental or psychological, spiritual, intellectual, ethical, moral, or focused on any of the various visceral or atavistic perceptions or elements of humans. Torture is a commen event, even in the developed countries of the world today. It is not just used against terror subjects in the US or by its allies. It is used by every law enforcement agency in the world; those in the US and other similar nations just hide it better than most. This is not conjecture; this is personal experience. The goal of torture may be for vengeance, it can be borne of paranoia, it can spring from a twisted sense of justice. Consider for a moment that a group of individuals plan for and attack a civilian target. They kill thousands of people, and destroy billions of dollars of property, crippling a portion of that nation's economy. Those involved who do not die in the attack are captured. Clear evidence exists to connect the prisoners to the act. History irrefutably shows that torture interrogations do not provide factual confessions--this is a point of science. What is then the point of torturing these prisoners? Is it to make them suffer before execution, pure vengeance? Vengeance is a hollow victory. The manner of exectution and the activities leading up to it speak more for the executioner than the condemned. If a man is condemned, his death is the goal; dead is dead. Why prolong the outcome? What purpose does it serve? Not justice. That is satisfied in the death of the condemned. An attempt at retribution for the suffering caused by the condemned person? That is satisfied by the sentence and the execution. Torture, in what ever form, by what ever means, serves one purpose. Unfortunately, that purpose can only be known by the torturer; it is too personal for third party speculation.