What is torture?

A Japanese man entered our cast about the USA in Skypeland. He roundly condemned US action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and claimed that none of the benefits from removing Sadam were valuable enough to justify all the deaths that have occurred since the invasion. (This might be true of course, but that is a bit hard to determine, and it is a bit difficult to go back in time and try another course of action...)

He brought up the torture in the Abu Ghraib Prison. We asked him over and over what the nature of the torture was in Abu Ghraib, and how he defined torture. He said that you could see it in the photographs and the videos taken by US soldiers themselves. We asked and asked what the torture was. He did not answer and just spoke on and on and on about how awful the United States is. Finally, when asked repeatedly how the prisoners in Abu Ghraib were tortured, he left the Skypecast without answering or providing details about what the nature of the torture was.

Many have trouble confronting the fact that the Abu Ghraib prisoners were scared by dogs, and were photographed naked and were threatened. However, they were not physically harmed. And the soldiers responsible for this abuse were sentenced to years in prison, when the evidence leaked out. Sadam's regime engaged in far far worse behavior in Abu Ghraib...