President Ronald Wilson Reagan on Torture

In a post on the man "who testified against his Japanese captors on the horrors of waterboarding," many of whom "were later hanged" — The Case for Torturing Lt. Chase Nielsen — Casey Khan notes that "the Gipper signed a bill defining torture and offering no exceptions to it whatsoever" with the following wording:

1. "...torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession..."

2. "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."