Even that isn’t true, really. That something is evil doesn’t imply that we should oppose it with equal ferocity to everything else that is evil. We should oppose the legalization/normalization of torture ferociously, for example, and I have personally opposed it with what some might characterize as a degree of ferocity. But those who contend that the legalization/normalization of abortion is more grave, and ought to be opposed with even greater ferocity, do have a point.

That argument has often been misused, amounting basically to ‘shut up about torture as long as abortion is legal’. That is obviously claptrap. We can’t talk about everything at once. But that doesn’t mean that, properly construed, it doesn’t have validity.

But to follow along your line, if its use in training is torture then we should oppose it in training with equal ferocity. If it is immoral but not as grave as torture, then we should still oppose it though perhaps not at the level of torture.

What zippy and I and others have replied to is the contention that one believes that waterboarding a captive is torture and thus intrinscially evil, then one must also accept that waterboarding for training is also intrinsically evil and oppose it with the same ferocity. If not, then that reveals that waterboarding isn’t intrinsically immoral, and thus isn’t torture, and the morality surrounding it is hopelessly clouded, so we should get off the Bush Administration’s back.

This is nonsense.

You seem to think that just saying that will make it so. I have never found the differences even slightly puzzling or obscure.

I get his point and your calumnies as well.

I imagine school’s out for all of you. Have a lot of free time, now?

Here’s your assignment for Independence Day eve: Write out the 500 reasons, in addition to torture, you hate the USA.

That is good, because I agree with it.

…it seems tha you now have some doubt distinguishing between interrogation and training.

I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever about distinguishing between interrogation and training. They are obviously, manifestly different. I can’t imagine what one would have to do to one’s mind, even if one had only the cognitive capability of a chimpanzee, in order to be incapable of distinguishing them.

Whether waterboarding in training is or isn’t moral is to my mind at least an arguable question. Whether waterboarding a prisoner in interrogation is or isn’t moral is not an arguable question.

You seem to be under the impression that moral reality cares about your semantic games. It doesn’t.

I understand that some people argue that waterboarding during training is not torture. (That might even be true, though I think it is far from a certainty).

That isn’t really here nor there though, and doesn’t modify anything I said in my previous comments in this thread.

“Waterboarding in training (though it might well be immoral) isn’t waterboarding a prisoner. The use of the same word as a shorthand convenience for speaking doesn’t make two clearly distinct kinds of acts into the same kind of act.

Waterboarding a prisoner is torture.

Maybe you could build a machine and waterboard yourself. That wouldn’t be torture, though it might for all I know be immoral. Waterboarding during training has greater resemblance to self-waterboarding than to prisoner-waterboarding.”