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2008-02-14 Home Front: WoT

Waterboarding is illegal, sez US justice department official

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Posted by anonymous5089 2008-02-14 10:38|| || Front Page|| [8 views ] Top

#1 All waterboarding does is scare the living pee out of someone. It does not cause any lasting physical or psychological damage. It makes one feel like they are drowning and so they agree to talk in order to stop the feeling of drowning. It just scares them. That's all.

I really don't understand why it has become such an issue. Maybe because it is so effective and Democrats can't stand to see America succeed at anything.

Posted by crosspatch 2008-02-14 10:43|| 2008-02-14 10:43|| Front Page Top

#2 Democrats can't stand to see America succeed at anything

It's not about America. Democrats just use anything they can find as a club to beat Bush. Donks will not hesitate to use waterboarding when they are in power. It's not about the troops, torture, human rights, the expense of the war or anything else. They don't care about any of these things. They just can't stand having a Republican in the White House is all.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2008-02-14 12:51|| 2008-02-14 12:51|| Front Page Top

#3 I believe and have stated as much publicly that waterboarding is NOT torture. You know what torture is? Just ask the Iranian secret police. Because they have more or less perfected the art and science that is torture. One need look no further than a certain Iranian dissident to see what I'm talking about. The example I'm referring to was related in a fairly recent Newsweek article. The author was trying to make the case against torture, and waterboarding, but all he really did, in my opinion, was to point out how truly benign water boarding is relative to the methods employed by other organizations and institutions. In this particular case of the Iranian dissident, the man was kidnapped and beaten before all of his limbs were surgically removed, without any anastheia or pain killers to boot, upon which he was sent back to his family in Jordan as a message to refrain from further dissident activities. THAT'S torture, folks. WE DON'T DO THAT.

In total honesty, I have had as bad if not worse things done to me as part of my fraternity initation. Sleep deprivation, forced diet, sudden and huge shifts in surrounding ambient temperature, physical and mental exhaustion. This sounds like a ridiculous comparison, and that's because it is, but my fraternity hell week was more like the SEAL hell week compared to what you would normally expect to find in your average college fraternity. I would even go so far as to say that we had to endure a variation of waterboarding, although I will stop at saying it was full-on waterboarding as I now understand it to be.

Crosspatch, I couldn't agree with you more. Waterboarding is designed to convince someone that they are drowning. Not a pleasant feeling, to be sure. However, is that torture? I don't think so and here's why: I know a lot of people, at least most people that haven't actually experienced it, equate the mental effects of waterboarding to having a loaded gun held to your head (I won't *AHEM*McCain* mention any names here). The prospect of inflicted death is held out as a means of intimidation in the hopes that the subject will opt to divulge information in exchange for having their life spared. Is having a loaded gun held to your head torture? Perhaps. Is it the same thing as waterboarding? Absolutely not. The fundamental difference between them lies in the immediacy of each act. A loaded gun to the head implies immediate, sudden, and irrevocable death upon pulling of the trigger. In other words, tell me what you know, right now, before I pull the trigger, or you are dead. Yet with waterboarding, the prospect of death is hardly as immediate or sudden and surely more recoverable should it even get that far (CPR, etc.). Because with waterboarding, you are not really trying to kill the person, nor are you really threatening to kill them. There is no lasting physical or mental damage from waterboarding. Because what you are really doing is only making the subject think that they MIGHT die if you don't stop, and doing so in a very effective way. It's not so much painful as it it is very, very uncomfortable.

All of this is really beside the point when you propose the "ticking time-bomb" scenario. (I love to do this with the anti-torture, anti-waterboarding crowd because they rarely have an answer that allows them to maintain their position with any semblance of intellectual or moral integrity). Let's say, for example, that you have a good reason (i.e. not proof, just reasonable cause) to believe that certain elements have conspired to kill innocent civilians-- one of them being someone you love and hold dearly-- in a horrific, gruesome, painful, and immediate way (i.e. flying a plane into a building, blowing up a train, setting off a chem or bio weapon, detonating a nuclear device, etc.). Now let's say, for this example, you have captured an individual you have good reason (i.e. no proof, just reasonable cause) to believe has information that could (i.e. not will but may) prevent the horrific, gruesome, painful, and immediate death of said loved one. The question you need to ask yourself is would you subject the captured individual to a procedure such as water boarding KNOWING that it will not kill him/her and will NOT cause ANY lasting physical or mental pain or damage but will ONLY make him/her think that if he/she doesn't talk they MAY die? Or would you rather not engage in such methods and leave your loved one to die a horrible, tragic, and potentially avoidable death?

Anyone who says they wouldn't engage in water boarding given such circumstances is either lying or a total sociopath. And if you would, you have no right to tell anyone else they can't do without being a total and complete hypocrite.

Case closed.

Posted by eltoroverde 2008-02-14 14:49|| 2008-02-14 14:49|| Front Page Top

#4 eltoroverde, right smack on the head.

Posted by twobyfour 2008-02-14 22:13|| 2008-02-14 22:13|| Front Page Top

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