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 ...
To adopt the Mario Cuomo response: If a scumbag terrorist threatened to touch one hair on my child's head I would rip him limb from limb personally, and take great pleasure in doing so. However, my personal desire should not be the basis for government policy.
The government is charged with preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States, not the lives of each and every US citizen. If the government did whatever it took to prevent anybody from killing any citizen of the United States, we would be living in a police state, and FReepers would be up in arms about the intrusion of tyranny.
When AlQueda accepts and acts within the Geneva conventions, then I’ll start being concerned if waterboarding is torture or not and whether or not torture is justified in interrogating homicidal fanatics.
In the meantime, they’ve essentially declared unlimited war on us, and it would be insane and treasonous to tie our military’s hands in the face of that threat.
Why can’t we interrogate people like Jack Bauer on “24” does? Ask nicely first, then put your face close to theirs and scream “TELL ME THE ANSWER!” at them. 9 times out of 10 that breaks them. What...? That wouldnt work at Gitmo?
Sure you can. You'll get 10-20 for it, but you can.
What? You aren't willing to pay the price? P*ssy....
I struggle with this issue. The mere use of the word “torture” inflames the debate. What is torture? It is a term that is used and misused a lot. I think of torture being treatment that results in physical pain, usually leaving some evidence of the fact that it has been inflicted. Most of the treatment alleged to have occurred at Abu Grahib, for example, was not torture, at least not in my mind (leave aside for the moment whether it was a good or right thing to do to those people). Clearly beatings and the like are torture, but embarrassment and fear-inducing actions probably are not. Where does waterboarding fall in the spectrum? I have little understanding of the techniques involved, but as I understand it there are no lasting wounds or effects of waterboarding, and no real risk of death or serious injury. If I am wrong on any of the above, I hope that Freepers will correct or enlighten me.
As for whether we should consider the use of torture (that is, real torture under any definition of the term) against those who have not committed to or complied with Geneva Convention standards, that is an open question for me. Are we limiting our options to an enemy that does not limit its own? Does the enemy, applying its standards to our behavior, consider what we are doing as “out of bounds”? Certainly they have done much worse than anything we have done. I understand the argument that we should not abandon our own standards of decency no matter what others do. However, we seem to be willing to give consideration to the customs and beliefs of those in foreign countries, and perhaps a reasonable argument could be made for a “When in Iraq, do as the Iraqis do” proposition.
Just the ramblings of a loyal Freeper, working out of a satellite office for the day.
Just remember that the 4th Amendment bans cruel and unusual punishment.
It is silent on cruel and unusual interrogation.
Would you rather live in a country that routinely tortures people or live in a country that does not, but will have a major city vaporized by a terrorist nuclear weapon within the next ten years?
I would choose the latter, and I suspect you would too.
That said, what we are being offered is life in a country that routinely tortures people that will probably have a major city vaporized by a terrorist nuclear weapon within the next ten years anyway. Torture will do nothing to stop that, and may even make it more likely.
Tortue will never, and could never, do anything to stop it. Your question is invalid. I would choose neither.
According to some of the logic I’m seeing here we should do it because THEY do it. So how far does that go? Beheading with a knife? Indiscriminate roadside bombs? Dragging bodies through the street? Flying airplanes into high-rise Muslim buildings?
Just curious where the line is.
If it’s good enough for the Spanish Inquisition and the Soviet Union, it should be good enough for us.
Everyone is falling for the magician’s trick of “look over here” -
the true issue is that the left in America doesn’t want us to have and use effective tools to fight the war on terror.
Period. End of story.
Read through to the end, FRiend.
The line has been drawn, if you really cared to find out.
No permanent damage, no broken bones, etc.
Seriously, the left would protest “The Comfy Chair” if it was an effective interrogation tool.
At home and abroad!
What in your mind is torture?
Chopping or sawing off heads?
Being put in a leaf grinder?
Being raped to death?
Starved to death?
What about three square meals a day, clean clothes, your holy book, showers and being able to play soccer?
Tell me what is torture?
“An Islamic terrorist has set up an atomic bomb somewhere in a city where 100,000 Americans, including your parents and children are living. There is no time to evacuate them.”
This is not the typical situation. If there is an imminent threat, anything should be in play. The problem is if torture is used as a regular interrogation method. That’s where you get false information and why many say it’s not at all reliable. If you make policy on this false information, you have big problems. If the guy gives you false info with regard to the imminent threat it doesn’t matter really as you have to try anything regardless of the results...it’s a ticking time bomb.
Ah...sorry. Didn’t get what you were saying the first time. Sorry.
So what?
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