This won't hurt much
Terry Jones
Wednesday June 16, 2004
The Guardian
For some time now, I've been trying to find out where my son goes after choir practice. He simply refuses to tell me. He says it's no business of mine where he goes after choir practice and it's a free country.
Now it may be a free country, but if people start going just anywhere they like after choir practice, goodness knows whether we'll have a country left to be free. I mean, he might be going to anarchist meetings or Islamic study groups. How do I know?
The thing is, if people don't say where they're going after choir practice, this country is at risk. So I have been applying a certain amount of pressure on my son to tell me where he's going. To begin with I simply put a bag over his head and chained him to a radiator. But did that persuade him? Does the Pope eat kosher?
snip.... (funny)
I hesitated to gravitate to harsher interrogation methods because, after all, he is my son. Then Donald Rumsfeld came to my rescue.
snip...
What this means in understandable English is that if a parent, in his anxiety to know where his son goes after choir practice, does something that will cause severe pain to his son, it is only "torture" if the causing of that severe pain is his objective. If his objective is something else - such as finding out where his son goes after choir practice - then it is not torture.
Mr Rumsfeld's memo goes on: "a defendant" (by which he means a concerned parent) "is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within his control".
Couldn't be clearer. If your intention is to extract information, you cannot be accused of torture. · Terry Jones is a writer, film director, actor and Python
More at link... worth reading, seriously.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1239688,00.html
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