waterboarding



AL QAEDA TORTURE METHODS

If they are known terrorists, or aide terrorists, and hold information that can save innocent lives.....I say do whatever it takes. By any means necessary. These people are worse than prisoners of war. At least war prisoners are simply fighting for their government, defending their homes and families, and abide by the rules of the Geneva Convention. Cowardly terrorists deserve none of the same respect or rights. None. They set out to murder innocent people to inflict fear and chaos. Waterboarding is too good for them.

I'm comfortable with it. It's way better than actually sticking a persons face in water.

I don't believe the US should be using torture. Period.

No problem with it at all.................why not lock them up in a pen full of pigs??

Torture is torture. No torture is OK. Human rights apply to everyone. You don't get to pick who "deserves" them or not. And frankly, no matter what terrible things our enemies do, the fewer terrible things we do, the less like them we are. We are better people for not engaging in those tactics. Bottom line, I don't ever want to pay for a government that tortures. How barbarian and disgusting.

Waterboarding!!! Yay! What a fun sport! Even watching it is entertaining!

Wait.......I was thinking of windsurfing. Oops.

word

Very well said !



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding

And it doesn't even work. You can get anyone to confess anything if you torture them badly enough.

against any form of torture..

Really? Can we make a Zionist out of you if we torture you badly enough?

Of course not. Everyone knows the only way to "make" Zionists is through deception, propaganda, and brainwashing.

Torture only gets people to "confess" to things. It doesn't make the things they confess actually true.

Completely agree.

I tend to agree with that but the US has always done it

yes.

Wow... Waterboarding - yes, lashing the soles of the feet - no. That's a mighty fine hair to split IMO.

Not one I'm comfortable with.

And more thumbs up here... well said Alex+R When we stoop to those type of tactics, we become the same as our enemies.


So what's your point there? Might as well have just kept enslaving people too...seeing as it had been done before?

Interesting. I wonder if those who voted yes could say with absolute certainty that they wouldn't confess to something they were innocent of if they were exposed to a continuous round of water-boarding?

I voted yes* and no of course I couldn't say that. That's why intelligence is never gathered from just one source, it's considered 'good' only when corroborated from multiple sources.

* I voted yes because while sticking a mans head in water is torture, simulating it but not actually doing it (which is what waterboarding is) is simulated torture, not actual torture.

I heard something on NPR to that affect. It's 'simulated drowning' because the victim doesn't actually drown ie. they do not die because their lungs have filled with water. Semantically it's correct. However, if I'm being pulled under by a strong current when out swimming, it's sure gonna feel like drowning to me, even if I get rescued and live. Same, I would imagine, with waterboarding. Am I honestly going to be thinking, "Oh, it's OK, I'm not going to die"?

With the proper training, possibly.

Even if not, it doesn't matter how you feel or what you're thinking, but merely what's truly happening to you. What's actually happening to you is that you think you're drowning but in reality you're not. It's an illusion. If the United States wanted to torture, don't you think they'd just stick your head in a toilet bowl? Why go to all the trouble of simulating the effect?

The truth is that the water boarding is not torture. It was only used twice. And it saved many lives of innocent people and helped us destroy the terror network. Which has been destroyed as a a centrally controlled network. Only the fringe kooks are left. (isn't it funny how "fringe", "kook" and "left" all fit together so nicely.) It's a towel on your face with water poured on it. We use the technique to train our own soldiers. Get real!

i say dip them in fire ants

Why go to the trouble indeed? If "with the proper training" someone can deal calmly with waterboarding, then what would be the point of using it? It's only effective if the victim feels that they are drowning. It has the same psychological effect as actually being drowned. The psychological effects alone qualify it as torture.

Is that a legal opinion? I'll be straight up, I have no idea what the legal definition of torture is. I always thought of it as physical.

you haven't been married long enough have you?

If the reference is to the oft used phrase "emotional torture", I never did understand it.

Unfortunately the legal definitions often differ from common sense definitions, and when you have people (attorney generals, for instance) twisting the legalities about what it is and isn't - it muddies the waters no end.

BTW Have you read 1984? The torture scene in there is pretty harrowing - its clearly as much about breaking the person's mind, the physical stuff is simply about making it easier to do that. Pretty unpleasant stuff.

From my understanding, information obtained via torture has historically proven to be unreliable. So, if the US is water-boarding to be 'really mean" to our enemies, then OK, but using water-boarding as a form of intelligence gathering seems misplaced.

This definition of “cruel and inhuman treatment” responds to the administration’s claim that some of the “enhanced” interrogation techniques allegedly approved in the past – techniques like extended sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme cold, and waterboarding (mock drowning) were not cruel and inhuman because they did not cause “prolonged” suffering. While the administration may argue that such techniques are still allowed, Senators John McCain and John Warner, two of the MCA’s primary authors, have stated that the legislation is specifically designed to criminalize these and other abusive interrogation practices allegedly used by the United States.4 Such methods violate the international law prohibitions against cruel and inhuman treatment, and may amount to torture.

Yes I've read it. I'm familiar with the scene. I have mixed feelings about this. Obviously, if it has a consistent record of being ineffective, it shouldn't be done. I don't think anyone is arguing with that. The real conundrum (for some. like me) is if it has a record of effectiveness in some cases and it doesn't result in any physical damage (e.g. no missing eyebrows, no burn marks, no missing limbs, no bleeding testicles, etc ). To me, that's a grey area and not clearly what I'd consider torture. That said, I realize what I consider torture isn't really relevant, there are laws on the books governing that sort of thing and I've already made clear I have no idea what those laws are.

Just let Jack Bauer do his job, people.

Get Jack some Jackboots.