Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

On the way home from school this afternoon, I tuned my radio to Rush Limbaugh. He had a guest host: Mark Steyn. The topic was torture, but Steyn had tears rolling down my cheeks. It's hard to replicate the humor, but he was talking about using caterpillars to frighten terror suspects into talking. Pretending to be an interrogator, he said, "Okay, we'll have to get out the caterpillars!" By the way, torture, by definition, isn't coercive interrogation. Torture is the infliction of pain. Coercion doesn't involve pain. When a robber puts a gun to your head and says, "Your money or your life," no pain is involved. The robber is imposing a choice on you, with the expectation that you will choose the lesser of two evils by your lights. (Most people prefer having their life but not their money to having neither their life nor their money.) Coercion works by means of threat. The threat doesn't need to be carried out; it simply has to be credible. Good robbers don't have to touch their victims, much less inflict pain on them. Indeed, they don't want to touch their victims, for that might lead to a struggle. They want a clean delivery of the wallet or purse. The same is true of good interrogators, except that they want information rather than money. This is not to say that torture is unjustified or that coercive interrogation is justified. It is to say that torture is not the same as coercive interrogation. I'm clarifying concepts, not evaluating actions.