Posted on 11/09/2007 6:14:39 AM PST by RDTF
A former Navy survival instructor subjected to waterboarding as part of his military training told Congress yesterday that the controversial tactic should plainly be considered torture and that such a method was never intended for use by U.S. interrogators because it is a relic of abusive totalitarian governments.
Malcolm Wrightson Nance, a counterterrorism specialist who taught at the Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school in California, likened waterboarding to drowning and said those who experience it will say or do anything to make it stop, rendering the information they give nearly useless.
"In my case, the technique was so fast and professional that I didn't know what was happening until the water entered my nose and throat," Nance testified yesterday at a House oversight hearing on torture and enhanced interrogation techniques. "It then pushes down into the trachea and starts the process of respiratory degradation. It is an overwhelming experience that induces horror and triggers frantic survival instincts. As the event unfolded, I was fully conscious of what was happening: I was being tortured."
-snip-
If Mohammed faced waterboarding for 90 seconds, Nance said, about 1.2 gallons of water was poured down his nose and throat while he was strapped to a board. Nance said the SERE school used a board modeled after one from Southeast Asia, though it had leather straps instead of metal clamps.
SERE attendees expect to be released and assume that their trainers will not permanently harm them. Nance said it is "stress inoculation" meant to let U.S. troops know what to expect if they are captured. "The SERE community was designed over 50 years ago to show that, as a torture instrument, waterboarding is a terrifying, painful and humiliating tool that leaves no physical scars -snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I was under the impression that it was used very selectively up until a few years ago, and that it is not used at all anymore, as an effective policy. Whether it is an absolute policy spelled out in a manual, I do not know.
I was not critiquing the current policy. I think our current policy, as I understand it, is pretty much on-the-money.
“I think anyone who uses fear to push a political agenda is a terrorist, plain and simple.”
By your logic, the Democrat Party is a terrorist group. Hillary is a terrorist (fear to create nathional health care). Schumer is a terrorist (fear about citizens with guns). Kennedy is a terrorist (fear about straights killing gays). Pelosi is a terrorist (fear about everything and ‘our children’). Al Gore is a terrorist (fear of global warming).
Sorry, conservatives are not the party that uses fear to push their political agenda. We are basing our decisions in reality and are trying to get people to see the world as it actually is, not trying to create fear and problems where there aren’t any and making a career out of it for ourselves. The fearmongers are based in the liberal enclaves, not mine.
Irrational fears are not good. All the democrat fears listed above are irrational because they are not based in truth. There is something to be said for rational fear, as a proper motivator for you to deal with something and deal with the source of your fear. It is a rational fear to fear Islamic terrorism, because of their philosophy. But it is stupid to just worry and not do anything to deal with it. Rational fear of a real danger gets you to do something about it.
Not strictly Navair, but I thought some of the SERE survivors on the list might want to weigh in.
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If we start taking action in Iran and use our special forces in preliminary scouting and prepositioning and for weapons targeting, would you have any problem with the Iranians using waterboarding and other torture methods against our special forces to obtain information?
With all due respect, using waterboarding as compared to what? Using a few of their proxy terroists to cut their out our heads off and mutilate us? Compared to that, I'll take waterboarding.
So, would the Iranians be justified in it? Would you object if they decided to broadcast such "interrogations" worldwide on live TV? If you do object, what moral or legal basis would you, as a defender of torture, use to condemn it?
Would the Iranians be justified in using waterboarding? I'm not aware that they use it. I think they probably use methods that, unlike waterboarding, cause excruciating, sadistic physical injury and death. Certainly their proxies do. And I'm not aware that we broadcast p.o.w. video on tv for propaganda purposes as our enemies do. I think it's in a provision of the Geneva convention by which we abide.
As far as I can tell, waterboarding does not meet the legal definition of torture.
Cordially,
Not at all. If my necessity defined the law, the law would be certain to contain words to the effect that the police should do whatever is necessary to protect Gridlock from harm.
The law contains no such requirement. In fact, the police do not have a legal responsibility to protect you, or anybody else, either.
I made no such contention. I don't think that it has. My response was to a different question.
Well if you are saying it is not being used currently, and that you agree with the current policy (it’s ‘on the money’) then you are saying you’d never be for using it.
What you are also saying is that you admit that when they were using waterboarding a few years ago, it was only being done ‘very selectively’ then. I believe if it was being used ‘very selectively’, that your concern that the policy would be abused, would be greatly minimized.
Can I ask you if there was anything the military could have done while using this technique, ‘very selectively’, that would have made you feel assured that it was not being abused, in your opinion? Could they have been able to give you enough proof that it wasn’t being abused, to your satisfaction? And if so, what would that proof have been?
>>>“would you want a pilot on drugs dur dur dur”
Well, would you?
What are we calling torture?
Thanks, I already said waterboarding is a form of torture. I still say it should be used in the very select cases they were using it in. It is an interrogation technique that has garnered very good intelligence that could not have been gotten other ways.
Really? Our National Survival? Name one.
Well, I think the record of activities as we know it, if true, is certainly proof that the procedure has not been abused.
If we were to have a policy that we were going to resume using this technique, I would like to see safeguards in place, such as requireing specific written authorization from a high (really high) level, or perhaps a warrant from the FISA court. Something along those lines.
Buddy I’m using your own posted response. You said that government policies can’t be based on emotions, that was the point you were making. When you bring this point up like this in the context of this discussion you are implying that that is the reason or one of the reasons you are against the waterboarding policy because you think that it was set because of an emotional reason rather than a more objective reason.
That’s not the point. Of course I wouldn’t if it actually endangered me, no one would, but that’s not the point. That quote is famous for being a “war on drugs” tactical question inserted into a emotional, non-logical series of TV commercials with a bunch of wimpy teary eyed kids asking the questions. Whether the pilot does drugs in his spare time is his business. As long as he gets me from point A to point b, he can OD on herion as much as he wants.
You are wrong. Waterboarding is not torture.
By this definition waterboarding is not torture.
Because, as we are fond of noting on this board, we are not a pure democracy, but a Constitutional Republic. Some things are beyond the majoritarian process - as they should be.
We disagree on whether or not waterboarding is torture. To my mind, it falls just to the non-torture side of the line. As such, I want to see it used, if it is to be used, very carefully and selectively, with ample safeguards in place. I would prefer it to not be used at all.
Things that fall on the other side of the line, I would like to see generally prohibited.
Two points:
1. A dictionary is not a valid source of legal definitions. What Websters says is irrelevant.
2. Drowning - even simulated - is not exactly a pleasant experience. One might even call it painful.
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