CingularDuality

Bah... Words mean something. How are we going to understand each other if we each think that a word means something completely different?

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leejo

In response to a few of your posts, I'll say again that I don't think it's a black or white thing. It's a matter of degree and of severity.

One could argue that a prisoner is being "tortured" if he or she suffers any discomfort or fear at all. My point is that everyone used to have a pretty clear understanding of torture (pre 2001). Now there is an aggressive effort in the middle of a war to lower the standard. Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, uncomfortable temperatures, and so on, are all being called "torture" now.

IMO for the vast majority of people concerned about the issue this has much more to do with the general anti-war anti-Bush sentiment than with any serious discussion about the legal limits that protect these detainees.

sordavie

Who didn't consider water boarding to be torture prior to 2001? During the Vietnam war, American generals designated the technique illegal.

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leejo

Your mama!

Kidding. Uh...the Geneva Convention people? Me? Apparently a bunch of other people.

luna

You know, Sordavie, you just got me thinking, so I researched the history of waterboarding and its legal standing in American history. Here's what I learned, briefly:

In the Spanish American war, a US soldier was suspended for using waterboarding. In this soldier's review, it was said that "the United States cannot afford to sanction the addition of torture."

In the war crimes tribunals post WWII a Japanese soldier were convicted of torture for using waterboarding and punished severely.

One quote that stood out to me regarding the historical significance of waterboarding was the following: "Almost every time this comes along, people say, 'This is a new enemy, a new kind of war, and it requires new techniques,'" he says. "And there are always assurances that it is carefully regulated."

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=15886834

That was just some quick googling to add to the conversation. I'll look into this further tonight.

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leejo

Love your avatar Luna.

leejo

This strikes me as insult for insult's sake. I was asked "who thought waterboarding was OK prior to 2001" not asked to list several authorities.

I don't think that the past prohibitions against waterboarding apply. An order that prohibits a random private from waterboarding anyone he decides to waterboard is different from a law that prohibits trained interrogators in controlled environments from using a particular technique.

I'm sure I've said plenty of things for y'all to pick at without your putting words in my mouth. I do not "condone" waterboarding. This is that facile black and white thinking again. I don't think it's torture in the classic sense and I don't think it's illegal, but I do think it's pretty nasty, and I expect it will eventually become illegal. Then we'll debate the next technique. Maybe we'll start tickling our detainees, or threaten them with a bad credit rating. Serve them white wine with beef. BAD white wine.

marstein

and
If that is the case, then another country could kidnap Americans and hold them hostage to get "information" out of them.

I just don't see how this "gathering information" justifies locking people up for years. You can't proclaim freedom and the rule of law with one corner of your mouth and torture and jail at will with the other. That's some kind of Orwellian 1984 scenario.

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Beatnik

That's an interesting take. Especially when the Executive took great pains to re-define its "enhanced interrogation" menu in both public and private (which later became public) memos. So in reality, the government has been making an aggressive effort to raise the standard, making it impossibly hard to define, which results in a standard being something that "shocks the conscience" or results in pain "equivalent to organ failure". And as we've seen in this forum, "shocking the conscience" is a relative standard at best.

The "anti-torture" position is a lot closer to ALL of our positions on torture before 9/11 (i.e. it's unacceptable and reprehensible) than those who defend this and other practices today.

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leejo

I think we all agree that torture is unacceptable and reprehensible, but we disagree on what exactly torture is.

In my opinion, if every single combat pilot or special ops person does it, as they do in their training, then it's not torture. It may be excruciating (ever hike with blisters?), it may make one feel as if they were about to die, even they would still know rationally that they weren't about to die (a big difference between this "technique", about which surely every member of A.Q. knows by now, and a hammer going "click" on an empty chamber!), but it's not torture.

leejo

Interesting video here (scroll down past the usual OMG Fox Sucks! stuff).

http://www.newshounds.us/2006/10/27/...n_the_face.php

I agree with a lot of what's said in the video, and disagree completely with a lot of what's said in the video. It does give an excellent description of what waterboarding is, how it works, why it works, etc.

The man who volunteered to undergo the waterboarding lasted over 20 minutes before they stopped. He sat up, and began chatting and laughing with the "interrogators". In my opinion, if one has been tortured, it would be physically impossible to have a pleasant chat immediately after the session.

sordavie

Waterboarding was also declared illegal by US Army generals during the Vietnam war. In one case pictures showing an American soldier using the technique on Vietnamese POWs led to his court martial.

During the 1800s many countries in Europe banned waterboarding.

I'm not sure why Leejo thinks that nobody considered waterboarding torture prior to 2001.

[edit] Oh, this stuff is already mentioned in your link. Waterboarding is not new, and it certainly wasn't uncontroversially non-torture before 2001.

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sordavie

That doesn't look like the technique as described by people who've undergone the process in real situations and those teach interrogators how to do it. Accounts of those who have undergone waterboarding are all consistent in saying that their lungs were filled with water and they were only revived when their captors sat on or beat their stomachs and chests, forcing the water out. Many accounts have it that they were only revived once they lost consciousness. One former SERE instructor describes these kinds of videos and popular media descriptions of waterboarding as amateur and not the real technique.

I agree, splashing water on someone's face is not torture. But, that's not waterboarding either.

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leejo

Sordavie, can I amend my earlier remark to say "A LOT of people" and then can we move on?

With regard to what people who have been waterboarded say, I think you're wrong. What's your source please?

ScratchMonkey

I don't know if tit-for-tat is being applied, but if it is, you don't get the benefit of the strategy if you don't carry out the "tat". Presumably the people this is used against are representatives of regimes that have already demonstrated willingness to use the same (or worse) methods.

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

The problem here isn't the nature of the torture, but the procedural guarantees to insure that "tat" is only used against those who "titted" us.

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