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Modern-day torture has been headline news. At JBHE we have received inquiries about forms of torture used on American slaves. In the slave years, various torture techniques were used to punish insubordination or to discourage slaves from running away. At times, slave torture was employed simply for the amusement of sadistic field bosses or overseers.
A Spanish judge has accused the Bush administration of torture in violation of international law. The judge ruled that since some of the detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention center are Spanish nationals, courts in Spain have the legal jurisdiction to pursue indictments. Many in the United States continue to call for the prosecution of Bush administration officials who authorized the use of torture.
Today torture has been used mainly to obtain information from suspected terrorists. These interrogation techniques are designed to extract information on possible future terrorist attacks or on covert operations in the United States or in other Western nations. Undoubtedly, torture also has been employed to gain knowledge of the whereabouts of suspected terrorists.
For obvious reasons, inter- rogators in the twenty- century favor torture tech- niques that do not leave physical evidence of abuse. Waterboarding, a highly controversial technique used by the Bush administration against suspected terror- ists, involves strapping man down and pouring water into his mouth and nose so that the prisoner is not able to breathe. The technique was first used by the Dutch in the East Indies during the seventeenth century. Additional torture methods employing water involve immersing prisoners in cold water or dousing them with buckets of cold water.
Other coercive techniques often declared to be torture include sleep deprivation, continual exposure to loud and annoying noise, and placing the subject in an extreme hot or cold environment. There is...