Waterboarding is Torture… Period (Links Updated # 4)

maybe someone ought to do some waterboarding on those who think it is fine to do it. Then maybe we can get an answer from them if it is a good thing or not…..like let geroge bush or dick cheney or donald rumsfeld answer those questions for us all, once and for all after they have tried it to see if it is what torture is, really!!!!

like the piece said, now we, as Americans, have to train our military to know how to withstand this technique for future use by our enemies, and all because those above mentioned ppl, including the liks of j. yoo who all think it is just hunky dory to do this sort of horrid things and now we have become what we were fighting against…tierney and ruefulness and dictators…what a bunch of horrific ppl we have let loose on the world and us too, for that matter. I sure do hope that someday, before I die, I can see those responsible for this whole miserable mess be tried for all that they have done to us and to the world.

It just makes me so sick….I can hardly think of this thing without getting nauseated…I mean really nauseated…

Would waterboarding be torture if it was done to his current wife, Judith, or any of his other wives or mistresses, or his children, or himself? Would it be torture then?

Larry, I can’t thank you enough for bringig this up. If only the world would know how people like you and Nance feel about waterboarding. Unfortunately, the image of the American people has been smeared so badly, that it will take a long time to undo.

I also thing that the both of you do honor your people, and it is good to know that you exist. Thank you

We shouldn’t just be objecting to waterboarding. This documentary should be viewed by people who think that any torture is acceptable. Several participants had supported it until they were subjected to it

TORTURE: THE GUANTANAMO GUIDEBOOK
In an inspired melding of investigative journalism and the reality-TV format, Tim Carter’s British documentary provides a disturbing demonstration of the conditions and coercive methods used by American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. For four days, seven volunteers agree to submit themselves to techniques believed used at the prison. “The clearest impression yet of what it might be like …

http://www.sundancechannel.com/films/500014365

Larry, I’ll take your word for it.

In my simple understanding, the difference with torture and that which isn’t is all about the psychological and physical impact. If techniques had no devestating short term and no lasting medium to long term affects on the victim, then that isn’t torture.

The dictionary and law may say different, but that seems to me is the spirit of the culture of [or lack of] torture.

Interogators might be seen as reasonable in taking an interogatee out of their comfort zone. But anything that exceeds this, must be construed as unreasonable, uncivil, in fact barbaric. Having effective torture in place defies the very guidelines that makes society civil.

An US Adminstration so proud of it’s record in the death industry is naturally going struggle with finding the balance in determining rights of the living.

Well, so much for Joe Scarborough. I had been under the misapprehension that, though conservative, he had a decent core.

And I’d like to bring up something related. Just before I clicked over here, I was reading Steve Clemons’ Washington Note. He has a post today where he discusses the curious fact that Mukasey’s first day of testimony seemed just fine and then came his weird backtrack on day 2. He speculates that someone from the Cheney team got to him a la The Godfather.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002473.php

This really is a criminal gang running our government, and they use criminal tactics.

I don’t know whether to be more concerned about the sadism of the folks who advocate waterboarding or their seeming ignorance about it. I like Malcolm Nance’s phrase “a crisis of honor”. It’s hard to imagine honorable people advocating such a thing. So far, none have.

some of the comments on that article have the whiff of sulfur about them. as i understood it, the article is about whether waterboarding is torture, and yet a fair number of people go on to respond by saying torture is okay if our intentions are noble.

why stop there? let’s bring back mustard gas! germ warfare! phosgene, phosphorus, you name it, i’m for it! better yet – just drop the big one. in fact, drop all of them. let’s just freaking kill ourselves.

apologists for this war and the tactics employed in it are well over the line of loss of humanity. i’m not surprised – we’ve always had such among us; this type of behavior is as old as america itself. but it is worthwhile to note that those few great leaders whom all of us respect, like george washington, were against it for moral reasons. should we now say that george washington is “enjoying moral superiority”?

the mind boggles; the gorge rises.

You got that wrong. Some texts are written rhetorically, which means they imply the opposite of what’s written. There are some bright people who post here who can use flowery language to bring out the ahhh’m inner meanings.

Suffice to say you have to read things carefully and if you reread you will realise everyone who replied [who are regular contributors] are absolutely against torture in every sense of the word.

Everytime I read another news article about the latest dispute over torture, I’m reminded of my late father (late as of summer’05). He must be rolling over in his grave over the idea that he fought with the 9th Armored Division for the Remagen Bridge over the Rhine River (the LAST remaining bridge over the Rhine) to Germany in WWII, only to have the U.S. become more like the torturers he believed we were defeating.

IMHO sanctioning torture is one of the first steps towards authoritarian driven tyranny (is there any other kind?); much like animal torture is one of the indicators police use to identify juveniles moving towards future crime.

Folks, while we discuss this, please remember that Bush and Cheney do NOT view low poll numbers as a liability. They view them as an asset, because it’s proof that they can achieve authority IN SPITE OF opposition. Mark my words, there will be NO negotiation with them. This is one White House that truly takes a mile for every inch they give. I defy anyone to give an example of anything significant that this WH has ever compromised on, that was not grossly out-weighed by the advantage they took.

Sorry, meant to say Ludendorf bridge at Remagen over the Rhine.

I saw Rachel Marsden on CNN of all places. I almost vomited. “One man’s torture is another man’s CIA sponsored swim lesson.” Josh Marshal has the clip.

Shortcut to: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/057687.php

I would suggest that people like her are animals however that’s the justification she uses to condone her beliefs and actions.

Let Marsden undergo waterboarding, and then let her tell us, for sure, if it’s torture, or not.

This is good info.

Nance makes several very astute points:
1. It is not simulated. The lungs are actually being filled with water.
2. It was one of Pol Pot’s favorite techniques. If you have half a brain and any ability to feel at all, that should stop you right there.
3. Torturers love it because it can be used over and over again on the same victim and doesn’t leave scarring on the outer physical body.
4. Torturers get intoxicated by their power over the victim and many of them will torture for pleasure if they can get away with it.

There is no excuse for the mainstream media to not be broadcasting this article all over the country.

I will again go to my hometown paper, write them and ask them why the heck they didn’t pick this up, point out once again how they get scooped dozens of times daily because they censor the news they will print in order not to offend the Bush Administration, and give them the riot act for failing to print the news, which is their defined job.

Everyone else please do the same. Make it clear to your local MSM paper your readership is lost of you can’t get news from them. Not printing important relevant news is a basic failure on a newspapers part.

Hey, Larry. Long time.
Is there any way to reach people who’re swayed by the torture apologists? I posted this over at Digby’s yesterday, but I wonder what you and your readers think of how this might function to bring people to their senses.

T’ain’t Torture
Attourney-General nominee Mukasey answered vaguely when asked recently if “water-boarding” is torture. Rudolph Guliani says “It depends.” The President of the U.S., his Vice-President, and prominent Republicans have been equally disingenuous. The Democrats in Congress say differently, as do the vast majority of the citizenry. Whom to believe? Well, help is here for the morally challenged among us. There is a very simple litmus test to determine whether or not a “technique” is torture, one which has the virtue of being unequivocal and at the same time foolproof. Simply put, “If it isn’t torture, then why are we doing it?”
It seems clear to all but the White House and the Republican Party that what officials call “enhanced interrogation techniques” is but a euphemism for torture. But torture it is. And in reality, there’s no room for doubt. And, if it isn’t torture, what is it? Entertainment? A momentary diversion from the tedium of questioning? Or is it, for instance, to entertain the detainee by strapping the him to a board, face up, head below the level of the feet, covering the mouth and nostrils with cloth and pouring a continuous cascade of water over him? Entertaining? I think not.
Rather, it’s done to deprive the individual of air to breathe. And the intent must be to make the victim think that they run the risk of being permanently deprived of air, and therefore to divulge all that they know, and are not, as officials would have you belive, rather than simply making him feel a little uncomfortable for a while. And if not intended to fill the victim with terror, and only to make them “uncomfortable,” why would such an inmate give up one’s friends and fellow warriors because of such treatment. Of course they wouldn’t! This technique and others known to be in the armory of the CIA et al, are meant to make detainees feel as if the last breath they took might just be their last ever, if they don’t cooperate with their interrogators. Mind you, it’s a kind of “politically correct” torture, because it is totally hands off. No beating, no strangling, no being held under water or having one’s head crammed in a toilet bowl. No, this is civilized torture, that leaves no fingerprints or (perish the thought) DNA on the victim. It’s a passive-aggressive sort of torture, a gentle torture, not the barbaric, brutal kind of torture that Saddam Hussein and his sons were reknowned for, which were apparently designed to make the victim suffer as much as possible while in custody, even if they never talked. In stark contrast, this not-torture torture of ours is clean and bloodless, and designed to make the detainee suffer only the terror of dying to get them to talk, and not to make them suffer, for suffering’s sake alone.
What about sleep deprivation? How does that hurt the detainee? It seems fairly benign, until you consider that in very short time hallucinations are the norm, and the body forgets how to balance its needed chemicals for smooth operation. No, this is not a benign technique. It’s guaranteed to yield a hallucinatory “confession.” What about turning off the air conditioning, or turning off the heater? Here, too, the “bloodless” result is unbearable suffering or death. For, even if the ambient temperature isn’t freezing, if the victim is naked the result will be hypothermia and eventually death. A cascade of symptoms, leading to death, accompany hypothermia: pale, puffy face; cold feet, hands, and face; shivering; listlessness; drowsiness; mental confusion; irrational thinking; apathy; hostility; irritable attitude; cold abdomen;poor coordination and balance; stilted, jerking movement; slow, shallow breathing; slowed or irregular heartbeat; stiff muscles and some trembling on one side of the body; loss of consciousness; loss of heartbeat.. So, it’s not such a benign technique after all. Sure, it doesn’t involve electrodes on the testicles or bamboo spikes under the fingernails. But it’s every bit as “uncomfortable,” and it’s a “whole body” discomfort. But it’s not so easy to tell, just by looking at a stiff, that suffering was visited upon the victim. Again, no blood; no fingerprints.
All of these “interrogation” techniques are designed to inflict pain or suffering, or both, on a detainee. And all are claimed to be “not torture” by the US administration and its supporters. Those who would have us believe that this is not “torture” are speaking nothing but evil. If it isn’t torture, why are they doing it?

We can’t expect a Bush DOJ nominee to say whether or not water-boarding is legal. It would undermine the Bushies and their use of torture. The Senators ought to ask if Mukasey believes waterboarding is torture. But he’d probably worm his way out of that one too.

So maybe the Senators should also ask Mukasey if he’s aware of the history of water-boarding? It was a common technique used during the 16th-century Italian Inquisition. US generals declared it illegal during Vietnam.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1356870

Really. I agree with Mudkitty. Marsden, Scarborough et al ought to take a few CIA “swimming lessons” before they spout idiotic Bushie nonsense.

With all due respect to Mr. Nance, trying to compare the use of the waterboard in CIA’s so-called special interrogation program with what happens in SERE school is an apples to oranges exercise. I don’t know who “reported” to Nance that CIA’s waterboarding technique was drawn from the SERE school training manual, but that “report” is entirely false. CIA integrates the use of a very carefully crafted waterboarding methodology within a whole range of other special interrogation techniques, some of which are torture, but most of which are not, in programs that are specifically and individually designed for each subject. The object of each such individual program is to extract information that it is believed by the nation’s most senior officials cannot be otherwise obtained. Trying to compare this to SERE school is misguided, however well intentioned. Before we start to analyze the CIA program, I think that it is wise to be as accurate and honest as possible about it, if for no other reason then to deny falsely based detractions of our analysis.

That having been said, the premise of Nance’s article about the immorality of torture is correct, in my opinion. Even if the CIA inclusion of waterboarding and other torture techniques within its special interrogation program is effective–and some very intelligent and knowledgeable professionals say that it is–is such worth the cost of losing what we desire to be the fundamental moral character of our nation? I believe that it is not, and this is why.

If we define our opponents principally as those who operate under the quasi-religious cover of takfiri salafism, the plain fact is that they will never prevail against the inevitable historical march of general civilization. Yes they can, and probably will, inflict pain and damage that is considerably beyond their numbers. Particularly so if they obtain weapons of mass destruction. But, in the end, they aren’t going to win.

If one accepts the above premise, then the choice is one of using torture to avoid pain rather than to achieve victory. Such a choice places political considerations above moral ones. If true, what conclusions can be drawn about leaders who make such a choice? If made in a democracy, what conclusions can be drawn about the people who elect, and re-elect, such leaders?

Answer those questions, and then draw your own conclusions about whether torture should be part of America’s interrogation repertoire.

Interesting piece at Politico by Daniel A Rezneck
entitled “Roosevelt was right: Waterboarding is wrong

This is in regards to the Philipine Insurrection after the Spanish American War.

The occasion was the Philippine insurrection, which began soon after the American victory in the Spanish-American War of 1898. It soon became clear that the American liberation of the Philippines from Spanish rule did not mean freedom for the Filipinos but annexation by the United States.

The Filipinos fought back savagely against the American occupation, committing many atrocities.

American soldiers responded with what was called the “water cure” or “Chinese water torture.” As described in a 1902 congressional hearing: “A man is thrown down on his back and three or four men sit on his arms and legs and hold him down, and either a gun barrel or a rifle barrel or a carbine barrel or a stick as big as a belaying pin … is simply thrust into his jaws, … and then water is poured onto his face, down his throat and nose, … until the man gives some sign of giving in or becomes unconscious. … His suffering must be that of a man who is drowning but who cannot drown.”

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=F736405D-3048-5C12-0080598B0DB08047