The whole operation was a long and agonising sequence of near-drowning, choking, vomiting and muscular struggling with the water flowing with ever-changing force. To put it mildly, it was ghastly, quite the worst experience of my life. There were occasional intervals for interrogation. How long the torture lasted, I do not know. It covered a period of some days, with periods of unconsciousness and semi-consciousness.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article3476414.ece

The muslim terrorists who received harsh interrogation received it under careful supervision and rules with medical doctors present and had no apparent lasting physical or mental affects – except for their bogus complaints to the Red Cross enablers.

If you want to see the victim of real torture look at John McCain or anyone coming out of the hanoi prison camp or WWII prisoners of war by Japan.

Obama and the Democratic left are making every effort to place the U.S. at risk for another attack to gain political favor with the far left here and complacent world leaders.

The insensitivity of Obama and his posse was on display yesterday when the genius had Air Force One do a low altitude flyby of Ground Zero for nothing more than a photo op without warning New Yorkers and creating a panic. The response from the White House was indifference. Welcome back to September 10, 2001.

Torture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is “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, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.”

Even assuming waterboarding didn’t hurt, potentially causing irreversible lung or brain damage (which it does), it still involves both fear and pain to coerce information and fits the profile pretty well.

You know when you’re swimming and a load of water rushes straight through the nostrils? That’s what the interrogation feels like. And I’ll take the word of men such as McCain who was beaten viciously and often and had other means of torture applied to him over someone that has experienced neither.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4193

Saddam was not even a threat to anyone but his own people.

ARE YOU SURE? The link below indicates that Larry Johnson thought Saddam was plotting to assassinate George H. Bush.
“Larry Johnson, a top counter-terrorist official at the State Department, said he still has ”no doubts” about the plot, recalling Saddam’s ”gangster” ethic. ”Personal honor was involved,” he said.”

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1019-05.htm

Thank YOU All, for your sound arguments and resolve to keep and defend a reasonable position during an obvious partisan distortion campaign. I know for certain that if waterboarding were practiced during the Clinton administration, the same people who are decrying it now would be passionately defending it. It stinks of Bush derangement syndrome, and George Soros.

Opinion
Tortured by the past
There’s a disturbing link between Gitmo and the interrogation tactics I used in Vietnam.
By Frank Snepp
April 27, 2009

As a CIA interrogator in Vietnam during the last five years of the war, I know I put my soul at extreme peril. I am still haunted by what I did, and I suspect that what I witnessed and perpetrated in those years set the stage for the Bush Justice Department’s approach to torture….

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-snepp27-2009apr27,0,3098743.story?track=rss

Torture was not ordered for the protection and safety of the US. It was initiated to get false information that met the PR requirements of political officeholders to mau mau this country into a war against Saddam who was a political enemy of Bush and Cheney. Saddam was not even a threat to anyone but his own people. It was a fraud. People have been tortured for a fraud.

SMOOTHING THE ROAD TO EVIL

Watching the media treat torture as just another policy discussion shows how smooth the road to evil can become with the press’ assistance.

The Washington Post, for example, ran a story headlined:

Effectiveness of Harsh Questioning is Unclear

We look forward to further stories along this line such as

Experts Debate Effectiveness Of Concentration Camps For Unwanted Immigrants

Legal Scholars Examine Murdering Suspects As More Effective Drug Enforcement Tool

What Made Hitler So Effective?

Maybe some people here think that a civil war is good for the country….